November 3rd, 2006 § 0 comments

Nice bit of linguistic trivia/hearsay: mandarin and shaman are ultimately derived from Sanskrit. Sanskrit mantrin (advisor, counseller) gets adopted by Malays (because India was historically almost as good at exporting pundits as the USA is now). The Portugese pick it up from the Malays, and apply it to the Chinese (who don’t use the word mandarin themselves) – and we take it from the Portugese.
Better yet, how about shaman. Old Mircea Eliade is responsible for this one, getting it from a Russin version of the Tungus sâman. That comes from a Mongolian word for a Buddhist, which in turn came from China, and ultimately from Sanskrit.
Lingustic history taken unquestioningly from [here](http://www.takeourword.com/Issue092.html)

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