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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 is the physical basis to which the nasal twang of Americans is ascribed?
(a) The moist climate.
(b) The dry climate.
(c) Colder air.
(d) Genetic diversity.

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

3. According to Chapter 2.6, what regional pronunciation is erroneously thought by some to have superior authority regarding English pronunciation?
(a) Boston.
(b) Chicago.
(c) South-eastern.
(d) New York.

4. What does Mencken list as dominant the English alternative for the word "mail"?
(a) Postals.
(b) Letters.
(c) Post.
(d) Shipping.

5. Who protested the adoption of the broad "a" in an 1857 work entitled "The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table"?
(a) Frank H. Vizetelly.
(b) Richard Meade Bache.
(c) Oliver Wendell Holmes.
(d) Noah Webster.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whose clarity of prevision does Mencken praise in the opening of Chapter 1.1?

2. Which letter of the alphabet do Americans differ in pronunciation from other English-speaking countries?

3. Which defender of Americanisms cited by Mencken in Chapter 1.3 states that "Language is made by the people"?

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

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

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Under what situation does language undergo great changes and renew its vitality, according to Mencken in Chapter 9.1?

3. In what does Mencken evidently delight concerning the speech of American, in Chapter 1.5?

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

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

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

7. With what sort of distinctions is Chapter 7.2 principally concerned?

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

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

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

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