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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Mencken, the word "none" is a degenerate composition of what two words?
(a) No tone.
(b) Not on.
(c) No one.
(d) Not one.

2. Which nationality does Mencken claim is most eager to Americanize the names of their children?
(a) The Italians.
(b) The Irish.
(c) The Germans.
(d) The Jews.

3. In what language does Mencken state the double negative was once "quite respectable?"
(a) Anglo-Saxon.
(b) French.
(c) Spanish.
(d) Russian.

4. Which two letters did the American ethnologist McGee insist were his first name and should not be followed by periods?
(a) AD.
(b) WJ.
(c) TJ.
(d) EL.

5. According to Chapter 8.4, what is the first impulse behind American imitation of English orthography?
(a) Compromise for cheaper printing.
(b) Convenience.
(c) Anti-colonialism.
(d) Affectation.

Short Answer Questions

1. To what does Mencken ascribe the inflection of English adjectives?

2. In what does the American pronoun not necessarily agree with its noun?

3. Who was the author of the couplet that Mencken quotes: "For thou art a girl as much brighter than her / As he was a poet sublimer than me"?

4. Lounsbury is reported as saying that, "The history of language, when looked at from the purely grammatical point of view, is little else than the history of" what?

5. Which organization produced a prospectus in 1913 that warned against extreme English conservatism in the spelling of foreign loan-words?

(see the answer keys)

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