COUNTRYSTUDIES. FINAL TEST
DATE ________________ LAST NAME ______________________
What kind of weather does the US have?
A) Moderate b) Mediterranean c) Continental-marine d) All mentioned previously
What is the most famous national park?
A) Yellowstone b) Isle Royal National Park c) Grand Canyon d) The Great Lakes
What was the first American University?
A) Yale University b) California University c) Harvard University d) Oxford University
Who is the father of the telephone?
A) A. Popov b) A. Bell c) T. Jefferson d) A. Einstein
What is the centre of the cinema production in the USA?
A) Hollywood b) Disneyland c) Los Angeles d) San Francisco
Who is traditionally thought to be the discoverer of America?
A) Henry Hudson b) Ferdinand Magellan c) Christopher Columbus d) Marco Polo
Who is the present president of the USA?
A) George Bush b) Barak Obama c) Hillary Clinton d) John Kennedy
Who gave his name to America?
A) Amerigo Vespucci b) Francis Dreik c) American Indians d) Christopher Columbus
Who created the best animated cartoon in the USA?
A) Mel Gibson b) Tarantino c) Disney Walt d) John Travolta
Who is considered the “Father of His Nation”?
A) Abraham Lincoln b) George Washington c) General Lee d) Franklin Roosevelt
What was the first English record or register of all land-holdings called?
A) Doomsday Book b) King Alfred’s Chronicles c) King James’ Version d) Danish Sagas
Who is the most popular hero of the English ballads?
A) Robin Hood b) Beowulf c) King Arthur d) Queen Elizabeth I
What is the first of Shakespeare’s tragedies?
A) Othello b) Romeo and Juliet c) Macbeth d) King Leer
Who is called “The Bard of Avon”?
A) Robert Burns b) George Gordon Byron c) W. Shakespeare d) R. Kipling
Who is the author of “Hamlet”?
A) W. Shakespeare b) Robert Burns c) R. Kipling d) George Gordon Byron
What is the oldest public school in England?
A) Eaton b) Harrow c) Rugby d) Cambridge
What is the biggest museum in Britain?
A) The National Gallery b) The British Museum c) The Britain’s Tate d) The Tower
Which is more powerful now, the king/queen or parliament?
A) The king b) The Queen c) The Parliament
Who was the British politician who was important in defeating Hitler?
A) Margaret Thatcher b) Winston Churchill c) Oliver Cromwell d) Gordon Braun
20. What place became part of China in 1997? (former British colony)
A) Hong Kong b) Malaysia c) Beijing d) Taiwan
Where was the first university in England founded?
A) Cambridge b) Oxford c) London d) Cardiff
Where does the royal Shakespeare Company perform?
A) London b) Oxford c) Stratford on Avon d) Cambridge
What theatre did Shakespeare write for?
A) The Globe b) The Royal Theatre c) Covent Garden d) The National Theatre
What were the letters of the Celts called?
A) Letters b) runes c) signs d) glyphs
Who defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar?
A) Horatio Nelson b) Washington c) Jefferson Davis d) General Grant
Who discovered Australia?
A) John Cabot b) James Cook c) Francis Dreik d) Christopher Columbus
Who were the first settlers of Australia?
A) Iberians b) Puritans c) Convicts d) Pilgrims
Who was the first woman prime-minister of Great Britain?
A) Condoleezza Rice b) Margaret Thatcher c) Queen Victoria d) Angela Merkel
What tea party is a historical event?
A) Five O’clock Tea b) Teatime c) Boston Tea Party d) Tea in Dallas
Who was the first president of the USA?
A) Andrew Johnson b) Grover Cleveland c) Woodrow Wilson d) George Washington
What was the group of puritans called who came to America in 1620?
A) Forefathers b) Pilgrims c) Colonizers d) conquistadors
What was the number of the first American colonies?
A) 12 b) 13 c) 14 d) 15
When was the declaration of independence issued?
A) July, 4 1776 b) June, 4 1776 c) July, 6 1774 d) June 14, 1774
Where was the constitution of the USA worked out?
A) Philadelphia b) Boston c) New Jersey d) New York
What ship brought a group of English Protestants to America in 1620?
A) Maysay b) Midsummer c) Mellon d) Mayflower
Lesson 26. The English Language
The Shaping of English
As for the English language, modern-day linguists group it among the Germanic languages, since its early origins are in the language of the Angles and Saxons, who hailed from the western part of Europe that became the Roman province of Gaul. Presently, however, the language is a veritable potpourri of many tongues. Although much of the language is derived from Greek and Latin, as well as the original Anglo-Saxon, the English-speaking person’s speech may contain traces of French, Italian, Hindi, Russian and Turkish, to name but a few.
The first part of a word, often called the “prefix” may give a clue to its origin. The prefix “tele-,” for example, may indicate that the word has been formed from Greek. So we have “telegram,” meaning “something written from a distance,” and “telescope,” which means “looking from a distance.” The word “television” is a hybrid, the first part being from Greek and the final part from Latin. Basically, it means “seeing from a distance,” which is exactly what we are doing when we look at a TV set.
“Pan-” is another Greek prefix. We have it in the word “pantheon,” meaning “all gods.” We also have it in the word “pandemonium.” Do you know what this word means literally? “All demons”; and that is what it seems like when there is pandemonium.
The final part of a word, or “suffix,” as linguists call it, often helps us to identify the word’s origin. You are sure to have noticed that many words end in “-logy,” such as “archaeology,” “anthropology,” “biology” and “geology.” Since the Greeks used the word logia to mean “speaking,” “discussion” or “study,” we can see that “archaeology” means “study of ancient things,” “anthropology” means “study of man,” “biology” means “study of life,” and “geology” means “study of the earth.”
A traveler through England cannot escape noticing that the names of certain towns and cities have the same ending. For example—Chester, Chichester, Manchester and Rochester, and Bicester, Chirencester, Leicester and Worcester. Why the similarity? The names are a relic of the Roman occupation of Britain, when military camps were established to maintain the Pax Romana (Roman peace). The Latin word for “camp” is castra, from which comes the “-chester” or “-cester” of today. One will also notice other English place-names, such as Wigston Parva and Wigston Magna, which again illustrate the impact of Latin on the English language. Since parva is Latin for “small” and magna is Latin for “great,” these names merely mean “Little” Wigston and “Big” Wigston.
In some cases, names of people and places have been accepted into the English language to signify things we use every day. When a builder uses a towering “derrick” to hoist some large component to the top of a building, he may not realize that this helpful machine receives its name from Derick, a seventeenth-century English hangman.
To protect his feet from snow and slush, an English mother may tell her son to put on his “wellingtons.” Why such a strange name for what others might call “rubber boots”? The word comes from the Duke of Wellington, the famous general of the Battle of Waterloo of 1815, and the type of footwear he wore. A German field marshal, who was a contemporary of the Duke of Wellington, Von Blucher, differed in his taste in footwear and so gave his name to another style of boots, “bluchers.”
A student of electricity soon learns that the electrical units of power, pressure, current and resistance come from the names of James Watt, a Scottish engineer, Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist, the French scientist Ampиre and the German Georg Ohm. These are designations that he uses in his calculations every day.
Words sometimes result from the union of parts of two or more English words. Examples of this are “avionics” (from “aviation electronics”) and “parsec” (from parallax and second), an astronomical unit equal to 3.26 light-years. Other words are formed from the mere initials of the words making up the longer name of the thing they designate. Notice this in the case of RADAR (radio detecting and ranging) and MASER (microwave amplification by simulated emission of radiation).
In the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on the northeast coast of England, there is a street called Two Ball Lonnen. How did this strange name come about? The word “Lonnen” is easy, since that is an old north-country English word for “lane.” But why “Two Ball Lonnen”? Local inhabitants say that in former times the road used to lead to a large house that had at each side of its entrance a brick pillar surmounted by a large carved stone ball. Hence, today’s unusual name.
[1] ^Ifric c.955-1020, English writer and Benedictine monk. He was the greatest English scholar during the revival of learning fostered by the Benedictine monasteries in the second half of the 10th cent. His aim was to educate the laity as well as the clergy. He wrote in English a series of saints' lives and homilies—designed for use as sermons by the preachers who were generally unable to read Latin. ^lfric was also the author of a grammar, a glossary, and a colloquy, which were for many years the standard texts for Latin study in English monasteries. Among his other writings are the Heptateuch, a free English version of the first seven books of the Bible. ^lfric is considered the chief prose stylist of the period. His later writings were strongly influenced by the balance, alliteration, and rhythm of Latin prose.