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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In what year did Noah Webster die?
(a) 1912.
(b) 1843.
(c) 1898.
(d) 1799.

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

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

4. Which word do the English always place prior to the proper noun whereas Americans place it after, as Mencken reports at the end of Chapter 10.3?
(a) Lake.
(b) Street.
(c) County.
(d) River.

5. What does Mencken say that a proper understanding of words and their meanings will enable their speaker to do, in Chapter 11.1?
(a) Speak without ever using slang.
(b) Create new slang all the time.
(c) Alter the course of language.
(d) Mingle slang and proper speech effortlessly.

6. In what does the American pronoun not necessarily agree with its noun?
(a) Subject.
(b) Number.
(c) Tense.
(d) Case.

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

8. Which of the following does Wilcox not list as a negative treatment of the English language by grammarians?
(a) Excessive inflection.
(b) Excessive revision.
(c) Multiplication of terms for a single conception.
(d) Excessive classification.

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

10. 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) George Phillip Krapp.
(b) W.W. Crane.
(c) Noah Webster.
(d) Charles Astor Bristed.

11. Mencken states that the "Meyers" are the "Smiths" of what country?
(a) Lichtenstein.
(b) Poland.
(c) Slovenia.
(d) Austria.

12. As what part of speech does vulgar American consider the word "self" within the spirit of the language?
(a) A noun.
(b) A verb.
(c) An adjective.
(d) An adverb.

13. Over how many post offices does Mencken state bear the adjective "New"?
(a) 600.
(b) 525.
(c) 350.
(d) 820.

14. In what year did the National Education Association withdraw from the campaign for simplified spelling?
(a) 1921.
(b) 1899.
(c) 1907.
(d) 1914.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the Anglo-Saxon form of the modern-day word "my," according to Mencken in Chapter 9.4?

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

3. Who was the author of the couplet that Mencken quotes: "For thou art a girl as much brighter than her / As he was a poet sublimer than me"?

4. In what parts of language does Mencken say the "chief grammatical peculiarities" of spoken English are found?

5. According to Mencken, the word "none" is a degenerate composition of what two words?

(see the answer keys)

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