Have you ever in your life heard anyone say, “I also read three Shakespeares?” If you did (now you have) what does it mean? I read Bill, John and Sam Shakespeare?
This sounds like a standard formation, in my native dialect. It would mean “I have read three works of Shakespeare’s.”
It is entirely possible that, after my AP English class was over, I uttered the phrase “and we read four Shakespeares.”
I’ve also read five Dickens and all of the Agatha Christies. Once, I had a whole summer that was all Stephen Kings. Just fr’instance.
Well, as long as Bill was one of the three, he’s probably OK.
Seriously? Where are you from? To me it sounds strange as hell. I’m surprised that I’ve never heard this construction before.
Doesn’t sound particularly strange to me. In college, one of my professors (who specialized in Shakespeare) regularly grouped “the tragedies,” “the comedies” and “the histories” – not to mention “the sonnets.”
Many of us also read the Brontes, although that did include both of them.
I’m from around Dallas, Texas. Though I can’t recall having heard this kind of phraseology, I can easily imagine contexts in which it would sound natural.
I don’t think it’s so much that there are dialects where it’s normative to use authors’ names as count nouns*, but rather, that there are dialects where it is normative to create count nouns “on the fly” in order to avoid circumlocution.
So, for example, I might say “I need three reds and two blues” in certain contexts, when what I “mean” is “I need three of the red markers and two of the blue markers.”
-FrL-
*As opposed to mass nouns, which is perfectly normal in standard English as far as I know. “I read some Shakespeare last night.”
I’m from central Indiana, with roots in southern Indiana. That means I can also say things like “my car needs washed.”
And there were three Brontes.
Seriously though–there are plenty of ways to poke fun at Dubya and come out looking smart. Making fun of his dialect isn’t one of them. Or maybe I’m just sensitive because I’m a linguist.
We here that one up in Michigan as well.
Hear, hear.
Here’s a good lengthy article about it on Language Log.
Short answer: Shakespeare isn’t in the same literary class as Christie, King, et al. Thus, it sounds odd.
Which illustrates why I changed my major from Literature to Journalism.
Maybe the President is leaving his options open on the authorship issue.
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I agree that judging one’s intellect by her or his dialect is foolish. To the best of my knowledge, I have never read any academic publications which refer to multiples of Shakespearean works as a number plus “Shakespeares.” I don’t believe that this use is common in either Austin or Bloomington. (The same is true for Dickens or Dickenses.) Just because Bush used it doesn’t make it a natural part of a dialect.
Traditional use would be “three works of Shakespeare” or “three of Shakespeare’s works.”
Bush sets a poor example for the nation’s school children with his poor communication skills. And I am not speaking of his dialect..
Academic publications are not written in one’s native dialect, but in the academic register. And just because the formation doesn’t sound right to you doesn’t mean it isn’t part of any dialect. It sounded perfectly all right to me, and I’d bet money that it sounds perfectly all right to my family and the native residents of my town. It is most certainly part of the dialect.
One can now argue over whether or not he should be speaking in his native dialect or in a “cleaned up” generic/prestigious one. I rather prefer the first option.
Here is an amusing article on Bush’s reading list.
I stand by my question. I have found help in some of the responses. If I say I have read three Connellys, readers of Michael Connelly will understand that I have read three of his novels. (Admittedly, if, among my conversants, another author named “Connelly” is known, ambiguity may be produced by my statement.) When I say, I have read three Shakespeares, the most that anyone can understand is that I have read some combination, totaling three, of William Shakespeare’s sonnets or plays. To say the least I have communicated very little. Quite the opposite of what one would expect from one who reads Shakespeare.
Was my effort to poke fun at Bush? No, my purpose was and is to question his veracity. I truly want to believe that for the President it was a joke.