Q 01/05

Traditional grammar divides English words into how many parts of speech?

A) Twelve

B) Five

C) Six

D) Eight

Answer · why

D) Eight

Noun, pronoun, adjective, adverb, verb, preposition, conjunction and interjection; modern grammars add determiners and others.

Q 02/05

Which part of speech expresses emotion, as in 'oops'?

A) A determiner

B) An interjection

C) A conjunction

D) An adverb

Answer · why

B) An interjection

A conjunction connects words or clauses, and an adverb describes a verb, adjective or another adverb.

Q 03/05

Roughly how many irregular verbs does English have?

A) About 100 to 200

B) About 1,000

C) About 12

D) About 500

Answer · why

A) About 100 to 200

Regular verbs take -ed for both past tense and participle; the irregular ones include the most common verbs in the language.

Q 04/05

'Went' was originally the past tense of which verb before it was borrowed by 'go'?

A) Wander

B) Walk

C) Wend

D) Wind

Answer · why

C) Wend

The process is called suppletion, and it is why 'go' has such a strange past tense.

Q 05/05

Which four moods does English have?

A) Past, present, future and perfect

B) Indicative, imperative, conditional and subjunctive

C) Active, passive, middle and reflexive

D) Nominative, accusative, dative and genitive

Answer · why

B) Indicative, imperative, conditional and subjunctive

Ancient Greek also had an optative mood, and Arabic a jussive.