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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What religious affiliation, commonly held in both countries, has had a larger influence on names in America than in England?
(a) Anglicanism.
(b) Puritanism.
(c) Catholicism.
(d) Presbyterianism.

2. What principle of spelling was behind much of Webster's theory concerning the simplification of spelling?
(a) Convention.
(b) Flexibility.
(c) Vowel accentuation.
(d) Phonetics.

3. In what location does Mencken say both the American and English orthographies flourish side by side?
(a) Canada.
(b) New England.
(c) Hong Kong.
(d) Australia.

4. Whom does Mencken quote as saying, at the beginning of Chapter 10.4, "Such a locality as 'the <i>corner of Avenue H and Twenty-third street,</I> is about as distinctly American as Algonquin and Iroquois names like <i>Mississippi</i> and <i>Saratoga</i>"?
(a) Noah Webster.
(b) Charles Astor Bristed.
(c) W.W. Crane.
(d) George Phillip Krapp.

5. Mencken reports hearing of a German named "Knoche," who to avoid being called "Nokky," changed his name to what?
(a) Knowles.
(b) Nock.
(c) Nixon.
(d) Knox.

6. What is the name of the professor who advocates the assimilation and alteration of the spelling and accentuation of foreign words?
(a) Brander Matthews.
(b) Edmund Gosse.
(c) Nora Helmar.
(d) Louise Pound.

7. Which still-popular German given name survives today, with a slight change in spelling, as Mencken reports in Chapter 10.2?
(a) Wilhelm.
(b) Karl.
(c) Franz.
(d) Hans.

8. Which phrase did Oliver Wendell Holmes use to describe the state of the person who makes use of slang?
(a) Creative genius.
(b) Bumbling idiocy.
(c) Intellectual alacrity.
(d) Mental atrophy.

9. What leads most of the studies of the sounds of the American common speech astray, according to Mencken in Chapter 9.10?
(a) A lack of scope.
(b) English conventionalism.
(c) Laziness.
(d) Individualistic interpretation.

10. Which two letters did the American ethnologist McGee insist were his first name and should not be followed by periods?
(a) AD.
(b) TJ.
(c) EL.
(d) WJ.

11. What is the longest list of spelling changes from English to American that Mencken gives in Chapter 8.1?
(a) The change of diphthongs into plain words.
(b) The omission of a redundant -e.
(c) The -or/-our distinction.
(d) Miscellaneous differences.

12. According to Mencken, the word "none" is a degenerate composition of what two words?
(a) Not on.
(b) No one.
(c) No tone.
(d) Not one.

13. According to Mencken, Italians often take the names of what nationality when they marry?
(a) French.
(b) German.
(c) Irish.
(d) English.

14. Into what was the French surname "Beauchamp" translated in America?
(a) Fairfield.
(b) Gardner.
(c) Taylor.
(d) Smith.

15. In what dialect of English is "slick" used synonymously with "sleek" according to Chapter 9.10?
(a) Australian.
(b) South African.
(c) American.
(d) English.

Short Answer Questions

1. What language does the formalism of English grammarians come from?

2. In what does the American pronoun not necessarily agree with its noun?

3. Which double negative word is primarily found in Shakespeare?

4. Which 1914 English dictionary made many important concessions to American spellings?

5. In what sort of languages are double negatives "perfectly allowable"?

(see the answer keys)

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