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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How many dialects dominate American English, according to Chapter 1.5?
(a) Two.
(b) Four.
(c) Ten.
(d) None.

2. Mencken claims that Noah Webster contains less of the scientific inquirer and more of what?
(a) The teacher.
(b) The father.
(c) The erudite fool.
(d) The philological traditionalist.

3. What ethnicity of people, through the influence of the mercantile class, is referred to by a different name in the United States than in England?
(a) Black/African American.
(b) Latino/Hispanic.
(c) White/Caucasian.
(d) Jew/Hebrew.

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

5. Mencken describes the American language as having a "democratic enmity" to all what, in the beginning of Chapter 6.1?
(a) Individualism.
(b) Regulation.
(c) Grammatical rules.
(d) Authority.

6. According to Benjamin Franklin, what was roughly the population of the colonies in 1751?
(a) 10,000,000
(b) 1,000,000
(c) 50,000,000
(d) 500,000

7. What is the universal substitute for the word "ye" as described in Chapter 6.2?
(a) Thou.
(b) You.
(c) Thee.
(d) The.

8. According to Mencken, how do the English pronounce "been?"
(a) Bean.
(b) Bin.
(c) Bein.
(d) Bain.

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

10. According to Mencken, what did the first generations born in the New World value as a virtue over enterprise and resourcefulness?
(a) Courage.
(b) Ingenuity.
(c) Niceness.
(d) Temperance.

11. How many classifications of Americanisms does Gilbert M. Tucker provide in 1921?
(a) Twelve.
(b) Twenty.
(c) Two.
(d) Thirteen.

12. Which term do English dictionaries all describe as an Americanism from the comparative list in Chapter 4.1, despite the English version being frequently used in America?
(a) Hog-pen.
(b) Railroad.
(c) Freight.
(d) Rooster.

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

14. What word in common honorifics did Edwin S. Gould protest against omitting in 1867?
(a) Very.
(b) Most.
(c) The.
(d) Right.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What moniker of currency has persisted in America despite having no currency properly of that name?

2. To what continent does Mencken attribute the acknowledgment of the differences between American and British English?

3. The prudish reluctance to name what sort of diseases hindered proper preventative information?

4. What is the physical basis to which the nasal twang of Americans is ascribed?

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

(see the answer keys)

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