Editing Bislama (section)

===Name===
The name of Bislama (also referred to, especially in French, as ''Bichelamar'') comes via the early 19th century word ''Beach-la-Mar'' from pseudo-French ''biche de mer'' or ''bêche de mer'', [[Holothuroidea|sea cucumber]], which itself comes from an alteration of the Portuguese {{Lang|pt|bicho do mar}} "sea animal".<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=bêche-de-mer |encyclopedia=American Heritage Dictionary |url=https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=B%C3%AACHE-DE-MER |date=2000 |language=en}}</ref> In the early 1840s, sea cucumbers were also harvested and dried at the same time that [[sandalwood]] was gathered. The names ''biche-la-mar'' and ''Sandalwood English'' came to be associated with the kind of pidgin that came to be used by the local laborers between themselves, as well as their English-speaking overseers.<ref>See Crowley (1990).</ref>

[[Robert Louis Stevenson]] wrote in an account of his travels through the Pacific in 1888 and 1889, "the natives themselves have often scraped up a little English&nbsp;... or an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward ''Beach-la-Mar''."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Stevenson |first=Robert Louis |url=http://www.1stworldlibrary.org |title=In the South Seas |publisher=1st World Publishing |year=2004 |isbn=1-59540-504-6 |edition=1st |location=Fairfield, IA |pages=15}}</ref> In [[Jack London]]'s story "Yah! Yah! Yah!", one of his "[[South Sea Tales (1911)|South Sea Tales]]", there is repeated a reference to "a bastard lingo called ''bech-de-mer''", and much of the story's dialogue is conducted in it.

Today, the word ''bislama'' itself is seldom used by younger speakers of Bislama to refer to sea cucumbers, as a new re-borrowing from pseudo-French ''bêche de mer'', which has taken the form ''besdemea'', has become more popular.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Crowley |first=Terry |title=Beach-la-Mar to Bislama: The Emergence of a National Language in Vanuatu |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=1990 |location=Oxford |pages=33 |chapter=1}}</ref>