Nanjing 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. Mandarin of the early Ming dynasty was not identical to any single dialect. Though its variant spoken in the area of Nanjing, which was the first Ming capital and a major cultural center, gained prestige gradually through the course of the dynasty. This standard language of the Ming and Qing dynasty, sometimes referred to as Middle Mandarin, was not based on the Nanjing dialect.