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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 3.5 | Chapter 4.1.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to the tale spread by William Gifford, what language was supposed to be substituted for English during the Revolutionary War?
(a) Latin.
(b) French.
(c) Spanish.
(d) Hebrew.

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

3. Which Founding Father is said to have sought to establish a new American alphabet?
(a) Thomas Jefferson.
(b) Benjamin Franklin.
(c) George Washington.
(d) John Hancock.

4. Which of the early presidents does Mencken identify as archetypal of the new American?
(a) Andrew Jackson.
(b) George Washington.
(c) James Monroe.
(d) Thomas Jefferson.

5. According to the report of Beverley, what did a group of soldiers turn into after eating some Jimson Weed?
(a) Zombies.
(b) Fools.
(c) Corpses.
(d) Somnambulists.

Short Answer Questions

1. What language does Mencken quote Sidney Low as saying is not taught to English youth?

2. What use of storage was added to the American meaning of the word "barn?"

3. Where was the broad "a" principally established prior to the Civil War?

4. Which London newspaper lamented the "menace" that American movies offer to the purity of the English language?

5. What "great humorist" does Mencken cite in Chapter 1.3 as "celebrating 'the vigorous new vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains'"?

(see the answer key)

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