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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What word did Webster argue should have its vowel sound changed to "ee" instead of "eh"?
(a) Heft.
(b) Deaf.
(c) Beer.
(d) Beef.

2. What term did John Witherspoon coin, framing it within the context of vulgarity?
(a) Scientist.
(b) Anglophile.
(c) Briticism.
(d) Americanism.

3. What purpose does Miss Wittmann say is served by the shortening of word forms?
(a) Creativity.
(b) Convenience.
(c) None.
(d) Color.

4. Who proposed a generally accepted nomenclature for currency in 1785?
(a) Thomas Jefferson.
(b) Noah Webster.
(c) Richard Grant White.
(d) Gouverneur Morris.

5. How many classifications of Americanisms does Bartlett postulate in his 1859 dictionary?
(a) Four.
(b) Forty-two.
(c) Nine.
(d) Three.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the English word for a collection of colleges?

2. Which of the early presidents does Mencken identify as archetypal of the new American?

3. What is the English meaning of the Hawaiian word "lanai"?

4. What is the second characteristic that Mencken attributes to American English in Chapter 1.5?

5. Whom does Mencken use to exemplify the flouting of linguistic purity in Chapter 6.1?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the difference between "rock" in English and in American, as explained in Chapter 2.4?

2. What was the predominant attitude of philologists towards the study of American slang, at the time of Mencken's writing?

3. What typically causes the difficulties of the American when hearing the Englishman or vice versa, as explained in Chapter 7.1?

4. Under what situation does language undergo great changes and renew its vitality, according to Mencken in Chapter 9.1?

5. How does Mencken describe the distinction between colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions that are generally accepted and those that are not? What example does he use to explain this distinction?

6. How does Mencken describe the attempts of British authors to give voice to American characters?

7. What does Mencken imply about the vulgar American usage of forms such as "yourn," "hisn," and "theirn," in Chapter 9.4?

8. How is the advance of American spelling characterized in Chapter 8.3?

9. Describe H.L. Mencken's attitude towards the American tendencies in the formation of new words.

10. What does Mencken mean by saying that Americans have "a habit of achieving short-cuts in speech by a process of agglutination"?

(see the answer keys)

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