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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Tyndale translated the Bible from Greek in what year?
(a) 1559.
(b) 1650.
(c) 1603.
(d) 1525.

2. Who was the leader of translation in the King James Bible?
(a) Anderson.
(b) Webster.
(c) Johnson.
(d) Bois.

3. Which of the following words is attributed to Shakespeare's origination?
(a) President.
(b) Company.
(c) Death.
(d) Assassination.

4. The Scots of the Lowlands first spoke a form of English brought by the Angles of Northumbria mixed with four ethnic groups that invaded during what period?
(a) The Restoration.
(b) The Rensaissance.
(c) The Dark Ages.
(d) The Inquisition.

5. The number of books in England did what after the invention of the printing press?
(a) Doubled.
(b) Halved.
(c) Tripled.
(d) Quadrupled.

6. English is the official language of how many countries?
(a) 25.
(b) 34.
(c) 53.
(d) 43.

7. What does "RP" stand for?
(a) Royal Pronunciation.
(b) Received Pronunciation.
(c) Recieved Phonetics.
(d) Royal Phonetics.

8. Robert McCrum writes in the Introduction, "Language, we know, is in ceaseless ____."
(a) Flux.
(b) Flow.
(c) Motion.
(d) Love.

9. James VI of Scotland became James I of England in what year?
(a) 1603.
(b) 1702.
(c) 1596.
(d) 1557.

10. Which of the four ethnic groups that invaded Scotland during the Dark Ages united the kingdom?
(a) The Asti.
(b) The Illiuni.
(c) The Scotti.
(d) The Finni.

11. Who remain the most direct descendants of the Celts?
(a) The Norwiegens.
(b) The Scottish.
(c) The Welsh.
(d) The Irish.

12. Who published the Dictionary of the English Language in 1755?
(a) James Joyce.
(b) Samuel Johnson.
(c) Daniel Webster.
(d) Daniel Johnson.

13. Robert McCrum was Editor-in-Chief of what publishing house from 1979-1996?
(a) Faber and Faber.
(b) Simon and Schuster.
(c) Penguin.
(d) Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald.

14. Northern Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands produced their own language tree that divided into what and German?
(a) Norse.
(b) English.
(c) Celtic.
(d) Welsh.

15. Who is Scotland's most celebrated poet?
(a) Sylvia Plath.
(b) Samuel Beckett.
(c) Robert Burns.
(d) Walt Whitman.

Short Answer Questions

1. After World War II, which national economy sent multinational corporations across the world and into NATO and the UN?

2. How many quotations were in the original Dictionary of the English Language?

3. When did the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes sail from Denmark and the German Coast into Britain?

4. When did James I lead a council of bishops and Puritan divines to create the King James Bible?

5. What is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common?

(see the answer keys)

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