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 p…