View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which defender of Americanisms cited by Mencken in Chapter 1.3 states that "Language is made by the people"?
(a) Edgar Jepson.
(b) George Ade.
(c) Richard Aldington.
(d) William Archer.

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

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

4. What is the English meaning of the Hawaiian word "lanai"?
(a) Bathroom.
(b) Porch.
(c) Balcony.
(d) Garage.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What notable author was the first Englishman to carry Americanisms successfully back to his home?

2. What event does Mencken credit with strengthening the obfuscation of distinction between American and British English?

3. Who protested the adoption of the broad "a" in an 1857 work entitled "The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table"?

4. What purpose does Miss Wittmann say is served by the shortening of word forms?

5. Which of the early presidents does Mencken identify as archetypal of the new American?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Mencken intimate by the assertion that the "inner spirit of English" has inclined steadily towards saying "I have go" for a thousand years?

2. What are the different significations of "guy" in America and England, as described by Mencken?

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

4. What two factors are discussed in Chapter 9.5 as contributing to Mencken's distress in the "movement toward the identity in form" and why?

5. What, in Chapter 1.3, is the main conflict of ideas that Mencken puts forth?

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

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

8. What is the relationship between the mean and nasty labor done in the United States and the desire of immigrants to change their names?

9. How does the severity and conventional loyalty of grammarians influence those they attempt to educate?

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 825 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample