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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. Which word do Americans use for "angry" that was once an English provincialism considered base?
(a) Furious.
(b) Pissed.
(c) Irritated.
(d) Mad.

2. What "great humorist" does Mencken cite in Chapter 1.3 as "celebrating 'the vigorous new vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains'"?
(a) Samuel Elridge.
(b) Mark Twain.
(c) John Fiske.
(d) William Dean Howells.

3. What notable author was the first Englishman to carry Americanisms successfully back to his home?
(a) Joseph Conrad.
(b) G.K. Chesterton.
(c) Cleveland Coxe.
(d) Charles Dickens.

4. What does John S. Farmer describe the Western vernacular as being?
(a) Racy and pungent.
(b) Flippant and pointless.
(c) Irreverent and irrelevant.
(d) Dry and prolonged.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. From what language does the English word "moose" come?

2. What American writer does Mencken claim likely inspired envy in British writers?

3. What difference in pronunciation does Mencken state most sharply distinguishes the two dialects?

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

5. What use of storage was added to the American meaning of the word "barn?"

Short Essay Questions

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

2. For what reason did the early Americans wish to distinguish their language from that of the English?

3. What typically causes the difficulties of the American when hearing the Englishman or vice versa, as explained in Chapter 7.1?

4. What is the relationship that Mencken identifies between French pronunciation and the pronunciation of Southerners?

5. What is Mencken's evident attitude towards the "wearing down" of vowel and consonant sounds in the vulgar American pronunciation?

6. What is indicated by dominance of American terms derived from German that are related to eating and drinking?

7. How is the advance of American spelling characterized in Chapter 8.3?

8. What is the difference between "rock" in English and in American, as explained in Chapter 2.4?

9. What two principal sources does Mencken identify as adding new words to the American English in Chapter 2.2?

10. What style of writing does Mencken advocate concerning euphemisms in Chapter 4.4?

(see the answer keys)

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