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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. Which term do English dictionaries all describe as an Americanism from the comparative list in Chapter 4.1, despite the English version being frequently used in America?

2. To what phrase did Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, and Robert Southey object as a base Americanism, as discussed in Chapter 2.3?

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

4. According to Mencken, the name of what game puzzles etymologists?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What is the character of the argument presented by the Society for Pure English in the quoted caveat?

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

4. What does Mencken imply about the vulgar American usage of forms such as "yourn," "hisn," and "theirn," in Chapter 9.4?

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

6. How does Mencken describe the distinction between colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions that are generally accepted and those that are not? What example does he use to explain this distinction?

7. From what tradition do names such as Faith, Hope, and Charity come, and what is significant about the continued use of these names?

8. What was the predominant attitude of philologists towards the study of American slang, at the time of Mencken's writing?

9. Characterize the intentions and effects of the renaming done by the Geographical Board, according to Mencken.

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

An important distinction, which Mencken makes in discussing the nature of the American language, is between the proper speech of literate Americans and the common speech of what he calls the proletariat. Write an essay discussing this distinction and its ultimate significance. According to what Mencken has written, is there a genuine distinction between the two? Which of the two does Mencken appear to favor? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each, the proper and the improper, the formal and the informal? What arguments may be made in defense of each?

Essay Topic 3

Of all the various ways in which the American and British dialects are divergent, perhaps the most obvious is the distinct spellings of words. Analyze the significance of this distinction and put forth an argument in support of one or the other spelling paradigm. How do the two dialects go about determining the spelling of a word? What are the principles that ought to be at work in the conventional acceptance of a word's spelling? Which of these principles is the most important? To which principles does each dialect adhere? What is the greater significance of this adherence?

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