Nellish, again

[George D. Allen]

Dear Colleagues,

Some months ago, when I was putting together materials for my phonetics
class, I asked you all if you knew of any discussions of Nellish, the
language that Jodie Foster is said to have invented for the movie, "Nell,"
in which she played a sort of "wolf child."  My request fell on deaf ears,
as I received zero responses.

It is normal in any field of science for questions outside of the main
areas of interest to receive little comment.  Thus, I conclude that Nellish
is not a hot topic.  On the other hand, pedagogy is always relevant in the
academy, and any time that there is a useful classroom prop available for
setting the context of a topic, teachers are usually eager to make use of
it.  Thus, I showed several scenes from the excellent DVD of "My Fair Lady"
on the first day of phonetics class, to excellent effect.  It also seemed
to me that Nell-the-movie could serve as the same sort of springboard into
talking about certain important issues in language development -- even if
Nellish, itself, isn't particularly interesting.  For example, one could
ask the students to determine what there is about Nellish that makes it
less than interesting for paedolinguistic scholars.

So I find the apparent *total* lack of interest amongst you concerning
Nellish to be something of a "puddlement" (that's Nigel Smith as the King
of Siam talking).  Any comments?

George D. Allen <alleng at msu.edu>
Michigan State University College of Nursing
A230 Life Sciences Bldg., E Lansing, MI 48824-1317
Voice: (517) 353-5976; Fax: (517) 353-9553

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