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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Epilogue, Next Year's Words.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How many versions of The Story of English were published?
(a) 3.
(b) 8.
(c) 5.
(d) 6.

2. What was the first English-speaking official colony in North America?
(a) Newfoundland.
(b) New York.
(c) New Deutchland.
(d) New Amsterdam.

3. The Anglo-Saxon language received a major boost when Christianity brought an enormous Latin vocabulary starting in what year?
(a) 359 A.D.
(b) 597 A.D.
(c) 238 A.D.
(d) 283 B.C.

4. Linguists know that languages spoken by around how much of humanity came from a common Indo-European source?
(a) One fourth.
(b) One half.
(c) One third.
(d) One fifth.

5. What word refers to a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes?
(a) Virus.
(b) Meme.
(c) Idiom.
(d) Metaphor.

Short Answer Questions

1. What word carried over from Cockney to Australian English?

2. Who was a central figure in the Uncle Remus stories of the Southern United States?

3. Initially what percentage of Australians were English convicts?

4. How many copies of Webster's Dictionary sold during the author's lifetime?

5. Scots is one of the oldest and most interesting varieties of English dating back to which centuries?

(see the answer key)

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