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. Who is the author of "Dissertations on the English Language"?
(a) Thomas Jefferson.
(b) Benjamin Franklin.
(c) H.L. Mencken.
(d) Noah Webster.

2. According to Mencken, democratic government is essentially government by whom?
(a) Businessmen.
(b) Politicians.
(c) The working class.
(d) Amateurs.

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

4. What does Sayce say that language is composed of in 1879?
(a) Words.
(b) Meanings.
(c) Sounds.
(d) Letters.

5. What English word does the author of "Men and Manners" lament about the American re-signification?
(a) Missionary.
(b) Clever.
(c) College.
(d) Buttock.

Short Answer Questions

1. What country's works dominated the reading habits of the American colonists in the latter 18th century?

2. To what phrase did Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, and Robert Southey object as a base Americanism, as discussed in Chapter 2.3?

3. What word did Webster argue should have its vowel sound changed to "ee" instead of "eh"?

4. According to Mencken, how do the Americans consider the precise English use of the indefinite pronoun ("one")?

5. To what country does the English correspondent in Chapter 4.5 ascribe many American expletives?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What is revealed by the attitudes of the English conservatives in Australia towards American spelling?

3. What characterizes the favorite slang phrases of the American soldier in World War I, according to Mencken?

4. What principally causes the difficulty of the English people understanding the American speech as explained in Chapter 1.3?

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

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

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

8. What characterizes the divergences of language usage that are cataloged in Chapter 4.2?

9. How does Mencken characterize Shakespeare and what is the Bard's relevance on American English?

10. In what way did the early political disunity of the United States hamper the growth of a national language, according to Mencken in Chapter 3.1?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 697 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample