Early history The original dialect of
Nanjing in the
Eastern Jin dynasty was a form of
Wu Chinese. After the
Wu Hu uprising, the
Jin Emperor and many northern Chinese fled south, bringing their variety of Chinese with them. The new capital of Eastern Jin was established at
Jiankang (), now Nanjing, thus shifting the local speech from a Wu variety to a variety of Mandarin. However, due to its role as capital and events such as
Hou Jing's rebellions during the
Liang dynasty and the
Sui dynasty invasion of the
Chen dynasty, Jiankang was destroyed and rebuilt several times. Immigrants from Northern China during the middle of the Song dynasty brought a
superstratum variety, which became the source of literary readings for both Northern Wu and Jianghuai Mandarin.
Ming dynasty Jianghuai Mandarin was likely the native variety of the founding emperor of the
Ming dynasty,
Zhu Yuanzhang, and also of many of his military and civil officials. Many southerners from below the Yangtze were relocated to Nanjing, which had been designated the capital. Thus formed the foundation for the
Mandarin (), the court dialect or
koiné, of the early Ming era. Western missionaries and Korean
Hangul writings of the Ming Guanhua and the
Nanjing dialect provide evidence that Guanhua was a koiné and mixture of various dialects, strongly based on Jianghuai. For example, it retained the distinction between final -// and -//, which was merged early on in Jianghuai Mandarin, including in Nanjing. Nonetheless, some non-Nanjing characteristics can be clearly discerned in official court Mandarin.
Matteo Ricci's
Dicionário Português-Chinês in its description of Ming dynasty Mandarin documented a number of words that appear to be derived from Jianghuai Mandarin dialect, such as "pear, jujube, shirt, ax, hoe, joyful, to speak, to bargain, to know, to urinate, to build a house, busy, and not yet." It also provides evidence for some key differences in
phonology between court Mandarin and Nanjing Mandarin. For example, the court koine followed eastern and southeastern variants of Jianghuai in using rounded finals in lexemes such as () and (), whilst in the Nanjing dialect these are pronounced with unrounded vowels (in this example, and respectively). In the early Ming period, Wu speakers moved into the eastern regions of Jiangsu, giving rise to the
Tong-Tai branch, whilst Gan speakers from Jiangxi moved into the regions further west of the Lower Yangtze, giving rise to the Huang–Xiao varieties. Jianghuai speakers also moved into Hui dialect areas. Even though in 1421 the Ming dynasty moved its political and administrative capital from Nanjing to
Beijing, the Jianghuai-based pronunciation centered on Nanjing retained
prestige throughout the late Ming. In the late seventeenth century,
Francisco Varo advised that to learn Chinese, one must acquire it from "Not just any Chinese, but only those who have the natural gift of speaking the Mandarin language well, such as those natives of the Province of Nan king, and of other provinces where the Mandarin tongue is spoken well."
Qing dynasty Jianghuai Mandarin, along with Northern Mandarin, formed the standard for
Baihua before and during the
Qing dynasty. It was only in the mid-1800s that the northern standard based on the
Beijing dialect gained dominance in its influence on the Baihua standard. Baihua was used by writers all over China, regardless of the dialect spoken, thus bringing a familiarity with the written norms of Jianghuai Mandarin to readers of vernacular literature across the country. Chinese writers who spoke other dialects had to use the grammar and the vocabulary of Jianghuai and Northern Mandarin for the majority of Chinese people to understand their writing. The origin of
Peking opera is associated with the dialect, with many of the mid to late eighteenth century opera troupes entertaining the Qing court in Beijing coming from the provinces of Anhui and Hubei that spoke various dialects, including varieties of Jianghuai Mandarin. Additionally,
Huangmei opera, from
Anqing in Anhui Province, makes substantial use of its local dialect.
Contemporary history Jianghuai Mandarin has been overtaking Wu as the language variety of multiple counties in Jiangsu in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. An example is the former Zaicheng Town (), in
Lishui County, Nanjing (). Both Jianghuai and Wu were spoken in several towns in Lishui, with Wu being spoken by more people in more towns than Jianghuai. Wu is called "old Zaicheng Speech", and Jianghuai dialect is called "new Zaicheng speech", with Wu being limited to a small community of elderly, speaking it to relatives. The Jianghuai dialect was present there for about a century, even though all the surrounding areas around the town are Wu-speaking. Jianghuai was always confined to the urban area itself until the 1960s, but it has now overtaken Wu. ==References==