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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Mencken, what did the first generations born in the New World value as a virtue over enterprise and resourcefulness?
(a) Niceness.
(b) Ingenuity.
(c) Temperance.
(d) Courage.

2. The prudish reluctance to name what sort of diseases hindered proper preventative information?
(a) Cancerous.
(b) Gastro-intestinal.
(c) Psychological.
(d) Venereal.

3. Which Founding Father coined the term "to belittle"?
(a) James Madison.
(b) Alexander Hamilton.
(c) Benjamin Franklin.
(d) Thomas Jefferson.

4. What English word does the author of "Men and Manners" lament about the American re-signification?
(a) Buttock.
(b) Clever.
(c) College.
(d) Missionary.

5. What language does Mencken quote Sidney Low as saying is not taught to English youth?
(a) Latin.
(b) Russian.
(c) American.
(d) Greek.

6. Who "tries" a legal case in England?
(a) The barrister.
(b) The judge.
(c) The jury.
(d) The solicitor.

7. What is the American substitute for the English word "tin"?
(a) Cup.
(b) Bucket.
(c) Dish.
(d) Can.

8. What event does Mencken credit with strengthening the obfuscation of distinction between American and British English?
(a) The French Revolution.
(b) The First World War.
(c) The bombing of London.
(d) The advent of the transatlantic telephone line.

9. What does Mencken list as dominant the English alternative for the word "mail"?
(a) Postals.
(b) Letters.
(c) Post.
(d) Shipping.

10. Who protested the adoption of the broad "a" in an 1857 work entitled "The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table"?
(a) Noah Webster.
(b) Oliver Wendell Holmes.
(c) Richard Meade Bache.
(d) Frank H. Vizetelly.

11. What letter, when preceding a consonant, greatly irritated Henry James like a "morose grinding of the back teeth?"
(a) E.
(b) T.
(c) R.
(d) G.

12. Who is the author of "Dissertations on the English Language"?
(a) H.L. Mencken.
(b) Noah Webster.
(c) Thomas Jefferson.
(d) Benjamin Franklin.

13. According to Mencken, how do the English pronounce "been?"
(a) Bain.
(b) Bin.
(c) Bein.
(d) Bean.

14. Mencken describes the American language as having a "democratic enmity" to all what, in the beginning of Chapter 6.1?
(a) Individualism.
(b) Regulation.
(c) Grammatical rules.
(d) Authority.

15. What moniker of currency has persisted in America despite having no currency properly of that name?
(a) Bill.
(b) Pence.
(c) Nickel.
(d) Penny.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who proposed a generally accepted nomenclature for currency in 1785?

2. How many pages in "The King's English" are dedicated to explaining the distinction between "will" and "shall"?

3. What word in American is used for the English word "shoe?"

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

5. Whose clarity of prevision does Mencken praise in the opening of Chapter 1.1?

(see the answer keys)

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