Your remark somehow caused me to fall down an internet rabbit hole.

First I remembered reading a story on the internet that in Bislama, one of the official languages of the island nation of Vanuatu, the word for Helicopter is "mixmaster blong Jesus Christ". The explanation being that blades of a helicopter are like a blender, and Jesus Christ went to heaven, so "the blender that rises up to heaven".

Then, before replying with that, I wondered if there actually was any proper source for that. Now, the official bislama.org website translates helicopter to "helikopta", so we already know that this is not true[0]. Also, surely a quirk like this would be mentioned on the Wikipedia page for the language, and it is not[1]. So where did the story come from?

The only primary source that I have found for this claim is a story from the 1980s by Richard Shears, a journalist for the London Daily Mail[2].

> “Consequently, some people spoke French, other English. The original inhabitants adopted Bislama, a type of pidgin English. They also used a picture language that seemed to combine a bit of English and pidgin, resulting in a brassiere being described as “basket blong titty”. A toothbrush was “broom blong tut” (brush belonging to tooth), a helicopter was “Mixmaster blong Jesus Christ”.

Technically, it might be the case that this was a Bislama way of describing a helicopter forty years ago. But until we get some native speakers to confirm or deny this, it sounds a bit unlikely. While this is not really evidence, the writing style also makes it sound more like made up a "haha look at the primitive natives"-story.

First we get the "basket blong titty" example. Because natives don't wear bras of course, they're nudes, so they don't have a word for it. But they have baskets, and a brassiere is something to hold breasts. Hence, basket blong titty. Ha. ha. (note how of all examples they could have chosen, they zoomed in on one that involves the word "titty"). Similarly: "haha, they do not make a distinction between brooms and brushes because they are simple, so they call a toothbrush a "broom blong tut". Note: bismata.org translates "broom" as "brum", and "toothbrush" as "tutbras". Brassiere is not in their on-line dictionary yet.

And then, once you follow that logic and accept that those two things might be true, 'mixmaster blong Jesus Christ' seems both outlandish and believable at once because it is both funny and conveniently fits preconceived notions of simple, primitive island natives.

But why would the Vanatu people know what a blender is, but instead of saying blender make up a simple word "mixmaster"? Why would the first association be a blender, but not a boat propeller, which seems a lot more likely for an island nation? Why would they know about the story of Jesus Christ and his ascension, and make that the first association?

I forwarded this little investigation to Snopes with the request to get to the bottom of this and either fully debunk it or, in the unlikely case that it is/was true, confirm it.

[0] http://www.bislama.org/translate

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bislama

[2] https://nursemyra.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/mixmaster-blong-j...