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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 9.10.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which 1914 English dictionary made many important concessions to American spellings?
(a) The London Pocket Dictionary.
(b) The New English Dictionary.
(c) The Cambridge Fleet Edition.
(d) The Concise Oxford Dictionary.

2. What letter, when preceding a consonant, greatly irritated Henry James like a "morose grinding of the back teeth?"
(a) G.
(b) E.
(c) T.
(d) R.

3. Which of the following groups of foreign immigrants does Mencken not attribute influence over American English in Chapter 6.4?
(a) Italians.
(b) Russian Jews.
(c) South-Pacific Asian Islanders.
(d) Slavic peoples.

4. In what sort of languages are double negatives "perfectly allowable"?
(a) Romance.
(b) Semitic.
(c) Teutonic.
(d) Asiatic.

5. According to Dr. Louise Pound, what do Latin plurals tend to become in colloquial American?
(a) Adjectival modifiers.
(b) Adverbs.
(c) Infinitive verbs.
(d) Singular nouns.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to the report of Beverley, what did a group of soldiers turn into after eating some Jimson Weed?

2. What is the English meaning of the phrase "to carry on"?

3. What language did "ambassador," "ancestor," and "bachelor" come into English from?

4. According to Mencken, how do the English pronounce "been?"

5. What word in common honorifics did Edwin S. Gould protest against omitting in 1867?

(see the answer key)

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