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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. In what year did the English Reformation begin?

2. When did Elizabeth become Queen of England?

3. What threatened Britain's Celtic chiefs after the withdrawal of the Romans?

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

5. Robert McCrum describes the modulation of British RP to what in the Introduction?

Short Essay Questions

1. What cultural wars and battles helped to create the English language, according to the authors in Chapter 2, The Mother Tongue?

2. What did James I do to reduce the rule of Celtic chiefs in Ulster?

3. How do we know how the English language sounded hundreds of years ago? What do the authors relate about grammatical shifts in the Introduction?

4. What do the authors assert is the common ancestry of all languages? What happened to most of them?

5. Samuel Johnson's dictionary had what impact on the Scottish dialect? What were Johnson's experiences in Scotland?

6. What myths relating to the English language do the authors hope to dispel, according to the Introduction?

7. What impact did the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons have on the Celtic language? Why?

8. When did Julius Caesar invade the Celts? What was the result?

9. What became of the Germanic tribes described in Chapter 2, The Mother Tongue? Where did they spread?

10. What examples do the authors give in Chapter 1, An English-Speaking World for the history of success of the English language?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe the undertaking of the first English dictionary. How many definitions were in the original Johnson's dictionary? What was it drawn from? How many years did it take to accumulate?

Essay Topic 2

Describe William Shakespeare and his impact on the English language. When did he live? How many plays did he write? How many words did he originate?

Essay Topic 3

Describe the Act of Union of 1803 in Great Britain and its effects on the Irish language and culture. What remains of the Irish language today?

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