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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Mencken, the English opposition to American spelling transcends the academic and takes on the character of what?
(a) The religious.
(b) The patriotic.
(c) The ethical.
(d) The political.

2. Which is the first factor that Mencken identifies as an immediate impediment to the growth of the American language in Chapter 3.1?
(a) Political disharmony.
(b) Territorial expansiveness.
(c) Lack of a national literature.
(d) Regional diversity.

3. What is the second characteristic that Mencken attributes to American English in Chapter 1.5?
(a) Resistance to neologisms.
(b) Disregard of rule and precedent.
(c) Disunity of regional dialects.
(d) Translatability to British English.

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

5. What language does the formalism of English grammarians come from?
(a) French.
(b) Latin.
(c) German.
(d) Spanish.

Short Answer Questions

1. What letter, when preceding a consonant, greatly irritated Henry James like a "morose grinding of the back teeth?"

2. What English word does the author of "Men and Manners" lament about the American re-signification?

3. What does Mencken say newspaper reporters no longer "slobber" over?

4. Which case of the noun in English yet has an inflection at the time of Mencken's writing?

5. What class of Americans is most influenced by Briticisms, according to Mencken in Chapter 5.2?

(see the answer key)

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