The American Language Test | Mid-Book Test - Hard

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Short Answer Questions



3. How is the "portmanteau-word" formed?



Short Essay Questions

1. What is indicated by dominance of American terms derived from German that are related to eating and drinking?

2. What are the different significations of "guy" in America and England, as described by Mencken?

3. How is the advance of American spelling characterized in Chapter 8.3?

4. What influence does Mencken credit the Protestant Episcopal Church with about American adoption of Briticisms?

5. What does Mencken mean by saying that Americans have "a habit of achieving short-cuts in speech by a process of agglutination"?


7. To what does Mencken ascribe the withdrawal of the National Education Association from the simplified spelling campaign?

8. What were some of the reasons that many immigrants changed their names upon arriving in America?

9. What two factors are discussed in Chapter 9.5 as contributing to Mencken's distress in the "movement toward the identity in form" and why?

10. What is Mencken's evident attitude towards the "wearing down" of vowel and consonant sounds in the vulgar American pronunciation?

Essay Topics

Essay Topic 1

Much of Mencken's The American Language is devoted to the study of expansion of the American vocabulary. Write an essay examining the various sources and means by which new words enter the American dialect, as well as the impact they have. From where do new words come? What prompts the admission of new words into the vocabulary? What languages have had the most influence on the American vocabulary? What does the American dialect do with its new words? What are the effects that new words can and do have on the American dialect? Be sure to use specific examples.

Essay Topic 2


Essay Topic 3


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