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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What American writer does Mencken claim likely inspired envy in British writers?
(a) Poe.
(b) Irving.
(c) Griswold.
(d) Fowler.

2. Which of the following groups of foreign immigrants does Mencken not attribute influence over American English in Chapter 6.4?
(a) Slavic peoples.
(b) South-Pacific Asian Islanders.
(c) Russian Jews.
(d) Italians.

3. 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) Italian.
(c) Irish.
(d) Scottish.

4. Which Founding Father is said to have sought to establish a new American alphabet?
(a) John Hancock.
(b) George Washington.
(c) Benjamin Franklin.
(d) Thomas Jefferson.

5. What is the American substitute for the English word "tin"?
(a) Cup.
(b) Dish.
(c) Can.
(d) Bucket.

Short Answer Questions

1. In terms of politics, an American candidate "runs" for office. What does an English candidate do?

2. Mencken describes the American language as having a "democratic enmity" to all what, in the beginning of Chapter 6.1?

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

4. 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?

5. What word does Mencken find Dr. John Dewey using in place of the word "opium?"

Short Essay Questions

1. What characterizes the differences between American and English usage of lower-class idioms?

2. What was the overall effect of Noah Webster on the spelling of American English?

3. What was the predominant attitude of philologists towards the study of American slang, at the time of Mencken's writing?

4. Why does Mencken find the double negative an appreciable linguistic deviation?

5. With what sort of distinctions is Chapter 7.2 principally concerned?

6. What typifies the difference in the use of honorifics between Americans and the English?

7. In what ways is the noun principally abused in vulgar American?

8. In what does Mencken evidently delight concerning the speech of American, in Chapter 1.5?

9. From what tradition do names such as Faith, Hope, and Charity come, and what is significant about the continued use of these names?

10. To what does Mencken ascribe the withdrawal of the National Education Association from the simplified spelling campaign?

(see the answer keys)

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