page_title: Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca)
hierarchical_section_title: Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca)
caption_attribution_description: Latina: Linguae Sinarum Mandarinicae hieroglyphicae grammatica duplex, latinè, &amp; cum characteribus Sinensium. Item Sinicorum Regiae Bibliothecae librorum catalogus… English: Zhongguo Guanhua (中國官話), or Medii Regni Communis Loquela ("Middle Kingdom's Common Speech"), used on the frontispiece of an early Chinese grammar published by Étienne Fourmont in 1742
context_page_description: Mandarin 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. In some 19th-century works, it was called the court dialect.
context_section_description: Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 官话; traditional Chinese: 官話; pinyin: Guānhuà; lit.: '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. In some 19th-century works, it was called the court dialect.
caption: Frontispiece of Fourmont's Chinese grammar (1742): Zhōngguó Guānhuà (中國官話), or Medii Regni Communis Loquela ("Middle Kingdom's Common Speech")[1]
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