[net.nlang] Boontling

jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman) (11/19/85)

	Boontling is a lingo developed in the Anderson Valley in Mendocino
County, California.  In the lingo, "Boontling" literally means "Boonville
language".  Boonville is the largest town in the valley, and "Boont" is the
Boontling word for it (many Boontling words are truncations of normal English
words).  "Ling", from "lingo", is the Boontling word for language.
	Boontling was most popular in the first decade of this century.  Its
basic vocabulary consisted of more than one thousand words and phrases and
almost three hundred proper names (of local people and places).  It was spoken
by most of the ca. 500 residents of the Anderson valley.  Today, not everyone
in the valley speaks Boontling, but residents are making an effort to keep it
alive.
	There is more than one theory about how Boontling originated.  One says
that the lingo was developed by children who used it as a secret language to
keep things from their elders.  Another theory claims the reverse: that
adults started it so they could talk about things that children shouldn't be
exposed to.  Another says that it was developed by young men in their late
teens and early twenties who worked together as sheepshearers and played on
the same baseball team, and that the younger siblings of these men brought the
lingo into the school and made it popular there.  After it became popular in
the valley, Boontling became sort of a social game among Anderson valley
residents, and a way to confound outsiders.
	One of the most interesting things about Boontling is its community
flavor.  That is, there are many words and phrases that are derived from
commonly known events or personality characteristics.  For example, there was
a Boonter named Zachariah Clifton (a Boonter is a resident of Boonville).
His initials were Z.C., so people called him "Zeese".  He was the person whose
job it was to brew coffee on hunting trips.  He made it very strong (people
said "it would float an egg"), especially on the last day of the trip when he
would use up all of the ground coffee he had left on the last pot.  Thus, the
word for coffee is "zeese".
	Here are some more definitions from "Boontling, An Anerican Lingo" by
Charles C. Adams, University of Texas Press, 1971.  Most of the information
in the above paragraphs comes from this book.  I have chosen the definitions
which are the most amusing to me.  Please don't ascribe any sexism or racism
you find in these definitions to me; I am quoting them verbatim.  Besides
which, they come from an earlier time when people were less enlightened in
some ways than we are today, but more enlightened in other ways.

	airtight - A sawmill. [Anecdotal.  There are two suggested origins.
		One asserts that a millworker involved in the construction
		of a mill answered inquiries as to how things were going by
		saying, "Airtight," by which he apparently meant, "No
		problems."  Another suggests the term was ironically applied
		to a mill whose steam system was so leaky that workers were
		said to have shut down all the equipment when they wanted to
		blow the signal whistle.]

	apple-head - A girl, esp. one's girlfriend. [This is rooted in an
		incident in which someone used the term derisively to refer
		to a Boonter's girlfriend who allegedly had a noticeably
		small head.]

	barney - To embrace or hug; to kiss; to "smooch." [An affectionate
		Boonter named Barney addressed women he knew with such names
		as "darlin'" and often kissed them in greeting them and in
		saying goodbye.]

	beartrack - Berry cobbler; berry pie. [Waggish analogy between the
		appearance of berries in pastry and berries in bear manure.
		The purple color and seeds were present in both.]

	bilg moshe - A trail scooter.  This is a recent coinage reflecting
		the rise in the use of trail bikes and scooters and jeeps.
		[Combination of "bilg" (billy goat) and "moshe" (machine).
		This is an adaptation of the commercial name Tote Gote, which
		was given a popular brand of trail scooter.]

	blevins - A carpenter, esp. an amateur one given to error.  [Several
		members of a local Blevins family tried, or had to engage in,
		carpentry without notable success.]

	bohoik - To laugh loudly and energetically.  [Imitative of such a
		laugh.  Also related to a lower-valley man nicknamed Bohoik,
		whose uninhibited laugh allegedly could be heard at a
		distance of three miles when atmospheric conditions were
		amenable to such a phenomenon.]

	briney - To hit a home run; to make a home run by hitting the ball
		out of the Albion field into the ocean (Albion was a nearby
		coastal town).  [Functional shift from noun "briney" (ocean).
		The Albion field was so situated that one method of hitting
		a home run was to hit the ball into the surf.  Boonters began
		saying, "He really brinied her."  Eventually, the expression
		meant to hit a home run anywhere under any circumstances.]

	buckey - A nickel.  [An allusion to the Indian head on the obverse
		of the "buffalo nickel" of the Boontling heyday.  The term
		combines "buck" (male Indian) and noun suffix "-ey".]

	buckey walter - A pay telephone.  [Combination of "buckey" (nickel)
		and "Walter."  A man named Walter Levi owned the first phone
		in the valley; as a result, a "walter levi" is a telephone.
		Early pay phones required only a nickel.  Some informants say
		a local Indian ("buck injun") once made a phone call which
		could be heard all over the valley.  He apparently thought he
		had to project his voice in a shout in order for it to carry.
		Hence, the "buckey" is said to be allusion to the Indian in
		the celebrated story.]

	burlap - To have sexual intercourse; to engage another in intercourse.
		[Anecdotal.  A young Boonter is said to have surprised a
		store clerk having intercourse with a girl lying on a bale of
		burlap bags in the storeroom.  He emerged exclaiming to his
		companions, "They're burlapin' in there."]

	That's all for now.  Please send me mail to let me know whether or not
you want me to post more definitions.  If a majority of responders votes yes
(and enough people respond to warrant the cost of sending more definitions),
I will post another batch.
-- 
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent..."

{amdahl, sun}!rtech!jeff
{ucbvax, decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!jeff

kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT) (11/19/85)

I enjoyed Jeff's posting on Boontling.  As I recall, Smithsonian
Magazine once carried a piece very similar to Jeff's.
--Barry Kort

wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (11/26/85)

I sent Jeff a note about whether there were any other regional languages
like "boontling" and he replied that it sounded like a good question for
the net; he didn't know of any others. Unfortunately, I couldn't reply
to his note from my home host, where mail has been variable in utility
lately, so now that I'm over here, I'll just post the inquiry anyway.

Is "boontling" unique, or are there other regional languages like it?
(I would think the difficulty here comes in the definition. "Boontling"
is something other than a dialect or jargon, but I hesitate to define is
rigorously as a "language", though we have been using that term for
convenience.)

(Post, don't mail, responses, please.)

Will

gordon@cae780.UUCP (Brian Gordon) (11/28/85)

In article <92@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes:
>Is "boontling" unique, or are there other regional languages like it?
>(I would think the difficulty here comes in the definition. "Boontling"
>is something other than a dialect or jargon, but I hesitate to define is
>rigorously as a "language", though we have been using that term for
>convenience.)

Does "gullah (sp?)", the "language" around Charleston SC and the nearby
islands count?

FROM:   Brian G. Gordon, CAE Systems Division of Tektronix, Inc.
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lambert@boring.UUCP (11/29/85)

> In article <92@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes:
>> Is "boontling" unique, or are there other regional languages like it? [...]
>
> Does "gullah (sp?)", the "language" around Charleston SC and the nearby
> islands count?

I guess what makes Boontling rather unique is the following:

(1) It did not evolve "naturally", but was made up by a conscious
collective effort;
(2) The purpose of the exercise was/is to create something unintelligible
to outsiders;
(3) The language is used in everyday life by a sizable community.

I put (2) in so that artificial languages like Esperanto will not qualify
(even though I doubt any of these would pass the everyday-life aspect of
(3)).  Note that (2) without (1) makes no sense.

Gullah is a creole language; it is comparable to many such languages spoken
all over the world (e.g., on many of the Caribbean islands, in the
Camerouns and Sierra Leone, on the Philippines).  All in all, some eighty
creole languages have been identified.  These languages evolved when by
some socially disruptive process people were put together who did not share
a common language.  The strong mutual likeness of all creoles makes it
clear that the process by which then a common language springs up is a
natural process; invented languages are much more diverse *and* usually
much more like some natural language that served as a model.

It seems to me that Cockney satisfies the criteria (1)-(3).

Literature:
    Pidginization and Creolization of Languages (D. Hymes, ed.), Cambridge
    University Press, 1971.
    D. Bickerton, Creole Languages, Scientific American, July 1983, 116-122.
-- 

     Lambert Meertens
     ...!{seismo,okstate,garfield,decvax,philabs}!lambert@mcvax.UUCP
     CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science), Amsterdam

fred@mot.UUCP (Fred Christiansen) (12/04/85)

> In article <92@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes:
> >Is "boontling" unique, or are there other regional languages like it?
> 
> Does "gullah (sp?)", the "language" around Charleston SC and the nearby
> islands count?
> 
> FROM:   Brian G. Gordon, CAE Systems Division of Tektronix, Inc.

let's not forget that most beautiful of regional languages, "Sawthun."
i first encountered this on my first trip south, on the Indiana/Kentucky
border.  by the time i reached Atlanta, i was won over.  :-)
-- 
<< Generic disclaimer >>
Fred Christiansen ("Canajun, eh?") @ Motorola Microsystems, Tempe, AZ
UUCP:  {seismo!terak, trwrb!flkvax, utzoo!mnetor, ihnp4}!mot!fred
ARPA:  oakhill!mot!fred@ut-sally.ARPA          "Families are Forever"