3 ms·

A tidbit: English bureaucratic system was in part copied from pre-1905 China, through East India Company.

jimnotgym 5y ago
And we still call government bureaucrats 'Mandarins' for that reason. Especially, 'Whitehall Mandarins', Whitehall being the area of London where several government ministeries are based.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Linguistic curiosities abound. “Mandarin” also being the name of a particular type of orange (fruit) because of the Chinese connection. The Dutch word for the fruit being “sinaasappel” — Modification of earlier “Chinas-appel” (close enough to English to guess) — https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinaasappel https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinaasappel However, the Orange Order in Northern Ireland is named after the Dutch King William of Orange, whose title “Prince of Orange” derives from a principality in southern France — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Orange https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Orange — but this in turn is probably etymologically derived from the Gaulish ar-aus(i)o- ('temple, cheek': https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_Vaucluse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_Vaucluse) while the fruit and colour come from the Arabic nāranj (نارنج) which is probably close to the original name for the fruit in Asia.
inglor_cz 5y ago
"Copying the best parts of a proven system while dropping the worst parts" is a good method of achieving progress. To a degree, most modern programming languages do just that - inspire themselves in ye olde K&R C of the 1970s heavily, but dropping the parts that made the code unsafe or impractical.
twelvechairs 5y ago
And it was re-exported too. Singapore particularly has developed from the english bureaucracy of the mid 20th C (as well as the earlier Chinese system) and has retained a very strong 'public service' while this has been dismantled in a lot of English-speaking world in the late 20th C

And we still call government bureaucrats 'Mandarins' for that reason. Especially, 'Whitehall Mandarins', Whitehall being the area of London where several government ministeries are based.

ben_w 5y ago
Linguistic curiosities abound. “Mandarin” also being the name of a particular type of orange (fruit) because of the Chinese connection. The Dutch word for the fruit being “sinaasappel” — Modification of earlier “Chinas-appel” (close enough to English to guess) — https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinaasappel https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinaasappel However, the Orange Order in Northern Ireland is named after the Dutch King William of Orange, whose title “Prince of Orange” derives from a principality in southern France — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Orange https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Orange — but this in turn is probably etymologically derived from the Gaulish ar-aus(i)o- ('temple, cheek': https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_Vaucluse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_Vaucluse) while the fruit and colour come from the Arabic nāranj (نارنج) which is probably close to the original name for the fruit in Asia.

inglor_cz 5y ago

"Copying the best parts of a proven system while dropping the worst parts" is a good method of achieving progress. To a degree, most modern programming languages do just that - inspire themselves in ye olde K&R C of the 1970s heavily, but dropping the parts that made the code unsafe or impractical.

twelvechairs 5y ago

And it was re-exported too. Singapore particularly has developed from the english bureaucracy of the mid 20th C (as well as the earlier Chinese system) and has retained a very strong 'public service' while this has been dismantled in a lot of English-speaking world in the late 20th C