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This test consists of 5 short answer questions and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What was the common, popular American slang word used for Germans during the First World War, according to Mencken?
2. Which of the following does Mencken not list as a once-slang word turned into one commonly accepted?
3. For which voiceless consonant is the voiced "d" substituting with growing regularity, according to Mearns?
4. In which city are the French names of streets reported by Mencken to be beautiful but so barbarously pronounced as to be unrecognizable by a Frenchman?
5. In what century did Americans begin to rebel against the capitalization trends dominant in England?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Write an essay investigating the various ways in which language can diverge into two or more dialects, using the principles found in Mencken's The American Language. What are the principal sources of its divergences? What are the primary ways in which it actually diverges? What characterizes these divergences? How is this shown, particularly, in the American dialect?
Essay Topic 2
Write an essay analyzing the nature of the relationship between the "melting pot" of American immigrant assimilation and the nomenclature that permeates the country. What are the evident influences of foreign languages on American names? How are these names Americanized? What is the general tendency of American-speakers in the employment and application of names to places and people? To what degree are the various names Americanized? What is the cause of Americanization of names? What is its result and what does it indicate about the American spirit?
Essay Topic 3
At the root of the divergence of American from British was the spirit of the Revolution. Write an essay responding to the following questions: What was the nature of the revolutionary spirit? Why did it desire to distinguish itself from England? Why did this desire carry over to language? How was it practical and how impractical? What do these impracticalities reveal about the nature of the spirit? How did this spirit directly influence the American dialect? How did it indirectly influence it? For how long did this spirit continue to influence, directly or indirectly, the American language? What is significant about the relationship between this spirit and the language?
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This section contains 379 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
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