BOONVILLE -- A Northern California dialect that is one of just two homegrown languages in the United States may soon go extinct.


The dialect from the area around the small Mendocino County town of Boonville consists of more than 1,500 words, many of them drawn from local names. The Chronicle says a phone booth, for example, is a 'buckey walter,' because a century ago someone named Walter had the first phone in the area and charged a nickel -- then called a buckeye -- to use it.

