Old Mandarin

Old Mandarin, also called Early Mandarin, was the way people spoke in northern China during the time of the Jin and Yuan dynasties, from the 1100s to the 1300s. This was when new kinds of everyday stories, poems, and plays began to appear, written in the language that people used.

We know about the sounds of Old Mandarin mainly from special writing systems and books made back then. One of these was the ʼPhags-pa script, created in 1269 to write many languages used by the Mongols, including Chinese. Two important books that help us understand Old Mandarin are the Menggu Ziyun from 1308 and the Zhongyuan Yinyun from 1324. These books show us how words were pronounced and share many features with the Mandarin dialects spoken today.

Name

The word "Mandarin" comes from the Chinese word Guānhuà, meaning "language of the officials". People first used this name for the common language spoken during the Ming and Qing dynasties. This language was based on many different northern dialects. Later, the name "Mandarin" was also used for the standard Chinese language and for northern dialects spoken from the 1200s until today.

In an old Korean book about the Chinese language called Nogŏltae, the language was called Hàn'ér yányǔ, or "Hàn'ér language". This name came from the word Hàn'ér that the Mongols used for people living in the northern areas that were once ruled by the Jin. This was different from the name Nánrén that they used for people from areas ruled by the Southern Song dynasty.