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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What "great humorist" does Mencken cite in Chapter 1.3 as "celebrating 'the vigorous new vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains'"?

2. According to Mencken, what did the first generations born in the New World value as a virtue over enterprise and resourcefulness?

3. What is the principal reason Mencken states that the English language has not greatly diverged since the foundation of the United States of America?

4. How is the "portmanteau-word" formed?

5. What ethnicity of people, through the influence of the mercantile class, is referred to by a different name in the United States than in England?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Who does Grandgent say are under the influence of the British in terms of their pronunciation?

3. What style of writing does Mencken advocate concerning euphemisms in Chapter 4.4?

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

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

6. What typifies the difference in the use of honorifics between Americans and the English?

7. 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?

8. What is the significance of the quote from Sayce at the beginning of Chapter 9.9 that "Language begins with sentences, not with single words"?

9. As explained in Chapter 6.4, why are Americans more conceding to foreign loan-words than the English are?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

There is a very notable and significant difference between the neologisms of the Americans and the British. Write an essay analyzing these differences, their sources, and what the neologisms reveal about the respective national characters. What is characteristic about the neologisms Mencken ascribes to Americans? What are the characteristics of those ascribed to the British? How are these different? How are they similar? How does each country come about fostering their neologisms? What do these methods and their sources reveal about the countries and their national characteristics, respectively?

Essay Topic 2

Mencken claims that the true American spirit is to be found not in the textbooks or proclamations of grammarians, but in the vulgar speech of the common people. Discuss this claim in a thoughtful analytical essay. What is the American spirit? Does Mencken clearly present what the American spirit is? Is his a defensible claim? How does the vulgar speech of the common person reflect this spirit? Is there some danger of degradation in linguistic form from prevalence of the vulgar speech? How does the vulgar speech reflect upon the American as a human person?

Essay Topic 3

Unlike nouns and adjectives, Mencken devotes considerable inquiry to the nature and alteration of verb forms in The American Language. Write an essay explaining the attention that Mencken pays to verbs. What role do they fulfill in communication? Why do its particular forms change more rapidly than other parts of speech? What does this rapid changing indicate about the relationship between language and circumstance/culture? How do verbs typically change? What is significant about the manner in which they typically change?

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