Northern California has its own regional language, and they are making fun of you
In a state known for exporting its culture to the world, Boonville perfected something rarer: a language designed not to scale.
Before California’s start-up culture gave us its own quasi-corporate pidgin, full of “circling back” and “thinking outside the box,” a tiny town in Mendocino County decided to “shark” us all. If you don’t get it, you’re a “brightlighter.”
Logging and farming town Boonville, in California’s Anderson Valley, has its own language, “Boontling,” a dense and private vocabulary of Pomo words, Spanish, Irish brogue, and pure inside jokes. While it has seen better days, this video does its best to help raise some interest:
In a state known for exporting its culture to the world, Boonville perfected something rarer: a language designed not to scale.