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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. Who is the author of "Travels in North America," published in 1827?

2. What is the English meaning of the phrase "to carry on"?

3. What is the universal substitute for the word "ye" as described in Chapter 6.2?

4. What word in common honorifics did Edwin S. Gould protest against omitting in 1867?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. In general, what is the relationship between foreign names for locations and American pronunciations?

2. What characterizes the divergences of language usage that are cataloged in Chapter 4.2?

3. What is the relationship that Mencken identifies between French pronunciation and the pronunciation of Southerners?

4. What is Mencken's chief critique of the classifications that he reports in Chapter 1.6?

5. To what does Mencken ascribe the withdrawal of the National Education Association from the simplified spelling campaign?

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

7. What effect did the exploration of new territory have on the language of the American settlers, as described in Chapter 2.3?

8. What characterizes the differences between American and English usage of lower-class idioms?

9. What influence does Mencken credit the Protestant Episcopal Church with about American adoption of Briticisms?

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

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

In describing the ways in which American became a distinct dialect, Mencken ascribes great power to the development of a national literature. Examine the relationship between a national literature and a distinct national dialect. What effect does literature have on its readership? What effect does local speech have on authors? How do authors and the literature they write influence a whole nation? How do they help to make the speech of the whole nation distinct from other nations? What, in particular, emerges from the works of popular authors? What is the overall significance of the relationship between a national literature and a national dialect?

Essay Topic 3

Through what Mencken claims concerning the nature of slang, in Chapter 11, it could be construed as a microcosm of The American Language as a whole. Write an essay investigating this claim. What are the chief characteristics of any linguistic development? What are the chief characteristics of the development of slang? How are they alike? How are they different? What processes do they undergo? What is significant and mutually relevant in these processes?

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