Guanhua
| Mandarin | |
|---|---|
| 官話/官话 Guānhuà | |
Frontispiece of Fourmont's Chinese grammar (1742): Zhōngguó Guānhuà (中國官話), or Medii Regni Communis Loquela ("Middle Kingdom's Common Speech")
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|
| Region | China |
| Era | Ming and Qing dynasties |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Mandarin (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: Guānhuà; literally: "official speech") was the common spoken language of administration of the Chinese empire during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It arose as a practical measure, to circumvent the mutual unintelligibility of the varieties of Chinese spoken in different parts of China. Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined. The language was a koiné based on Mandarin dialects, initially those spoken around Nanjing but later switching to Beijing, and developed into Standard Chinese in the 20th century. It has also been referred to as the Court dialect.
By the late imperial period, local varieties of Chinese had diverged to the extent that people from different provinces could not understand one another. In order to facilitate communication between officials from different provinces, and between officials and the inhabitants of the areas to which they were posted, imperial administrations adopted a koiné based on various northern dialects. Until well into the 19th century, this language was based on dialects spoken in the area of Nanjing, the first Ming capital and a major cultural centre, though not identical to any single dialect. The standard language of the Ming and early Qing, when it was based on lower Yangtze dialects, is sometimes called Middle Mandarin.
In 1375, the Hongwu Emperor commissioned a dictionary known as the Hóngwǔ Zhèngyùn (洪武正韻) intended to give a standard pronunciation. The dictionary was unsuccessful, criticised on one side for departing from the tradition of the Song dynasty rhyme dictionaries and rhyme tables, and on the other for not accurately reflecting the contemporary standard of elegant speech.
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