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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4.4 | Chapter 4.5.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which of the following groups of immigrants does Mencken claim have a profound effect on not only the American vocabulary, but also its pronunciation and idiom?
(a) Danish.
(b) Irish.
(c) Italian.
(d) Scottish.

2. Which of the following did the African slaves NOT introduce to American English?
(a) Gumbo.
(b) Goober.
(c) Banjo.
(d) Voodoo.

3. What "Anglomaniac affectation" did Noah Webster sneer at in 1789?
(a) The broad "a."
(b) Clinging to the silent "u" as in "honour."
(c) The recalcitrance to neologisms.
(d) The literature of Fowler.

4. Which London newspaper lamented the "menace" that American movies offer to the purity of the English language?
(a) The <i>Illustrated London News</i>.
(b) The <i>Daily News</i>.
(c) The <i>Daily Herald</i>.
(d) The <i>Times</i>.

5. What does Mencken list as dominant the English alternative for the word "mail"?
(a) Post.
(b) Postals.
(c) Shipping.
(d) Letters.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Mencken, which title is subject to the greatest divergence in usage?

2. Who is the author of "Dissertations on the English Language"?

3. According to Mencken, the name of what game puzzles etymologists?

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

5. Who protested the adoption of the broad "a" in an 1857 work entitled "The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table"?

(see the answer key)

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