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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In what dialect of English is "slick" used synonymously with "sleek" according to Chapter 9.10?
(a) South African.
(b) Australian.
(c) American.
(d) English.

2. In what sort of languages are double negatives "perfectly allowable"?
(a) Semitic.
(b) Asiatic.
(c) Teutonic.
(d) Romance.

3. According to the study of E.J. Hills, how many descriptive adjectives are possessed by the average child of two?
(a) 72.
(b) 59.
(c) 173.
(d) 23.

4. What military slang term refers to the sunburned necks of the Marines?
(a) Roughneck.
(b) Leatherneck.
(c) Rawhide.
(d) Toughneck.

5. Which of the following does Wilcox not list as a negative treatment of the English language by grammarians?
(a) Multiplication of terms for a single conception.
(b) Excessive classification.
(c) Excessive revision.
(d) Excessive inflection.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Mencken, the English opposition to American spelling transcends the academic and takes on the character of what?

2. Whom does Mencken quote as saying, at the beginning of Chapter 10.4, "Such a locality as 'the <i>corner of Avenue H and Twenty-third street,</I> is about as distinctly American as Algonquin and Iroquois names like <i>Mississippi</i> and <i>Saratoga</i>"?

3. In what region of the United States are Spanish names corrupted, as Dutch names are in New York?

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. In what year did Noah Webster die?

(see the answer keys)

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