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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 of the following was not used as a substitute for the once indecent term, for highly refined ears, "bull"?
(a) Gentleman-cow.
(b) Standing-cow.
(c) Male-cow.
(d) Cow-creature.

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

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

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

5. What does Mencken say newspaper reporters no longer "slobber" over?
(a) Ceremonies.
(b) British idioms.
(c) Tragedies.
(d) Interviews.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. Where was the broad "a" principally established prior to the Civil War?

3. What is the English word for a collection of colleges?

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

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

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. 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?

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

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

5. Upon what does Mencken claim the art of American prose is based, in Chapter 9.2?

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

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

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

9. Describe H.L. Mencken's attitude towards the American tendencies in the formation of new words.

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

(see the answer keys)

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