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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 sound did Webster object to inserting in words such as "gradual" and "nature," before the "u"?
(a) Y.
(b) Ch.
(c) Dh.
(d) T.

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

3. What is the principal reason Mencken states that the English language has not greatly diverged since the foundation of the United States of America?
(a) American neo-classical tastes.
(b) Solidarity of higher education.
(c) Transatlantic travel.
(d) Transatlantic communication.

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

5. What country's works dominated the reading habits of the American colonists in the latter 18th century?
(a) France.
(b) England.
(c) Germany.
(d) Denmark.

Short Answer Questions

1. What letter, when preceding a consonant, greatly irritated Henry James like a "morose grinding of the back teeth?"

2. Who is the author of "Travels in North America," published in 1827?

3. What word in American is used for the English word "shoe?"

4. What term did John Witherspoon coin, framing it within the context of vulgarity?

5. Which Founding Father is said to have sought to establish a new American alphabet?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What is the character of the argument presented by the Society for Pure English in the quoted caveat?

3. How does Mencken describe the attempts of British authors to give voice to American characters?

4. What does Mencken mean by saying that Americans have "a habit of achieving short-cuts in speech by a process of agglutination"?

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

6. Who does Grandgent say are under the influence of the British in terms of their pronunciation?

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

8. In Chapter 1.2, whom does Mencken identify as chiefly responsible for the inhibiting of an American dialect?

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

10. What chief cause does Mencken ascribes the backwardness of American war slang to?

(see the answer keys)

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