conuly

Crystallize it, exactly - it stopped being a living language and turned into a dead one when kids learned it from word-lists on the blackboard rather than from eavesdropping on their uncles. Of course it's not really a language, but people who aren't lingo-geeks don't care about the fine distinctions between language, dialect, jargon, cant, patois and so on, even if they know the words - even Gibberish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibberish_(language_game)) and the like get called 'languages'.

Boontling is quaint, but that's about all one can say about it. It's got less than 2000 words and no grammar of its own, so anyone with a word-list could learn the whole thing in a week, and then... *yawn*. Sure, it reflects 'local history', but it's boring recent history of a very small and mundane locale - if not for Boontling, no one would have ever heard of Boonville.

When I was about 13, there was a TV show that featured some old guy speaking Boontling, and it was all a big stupid joke like 'Hee Haw', as if the guy was too naive to realize they were making fun of his quaint hayseed ways. I bet the teenagers in Boonville practically died of embarrassment every week.