Old Mandarin

Old Mandarin
Early Mandarin
RegionNorth China Plain
Era12th to 14th centuries
Early forms
Chinese characters, ʼPhags-pa script
Language codes
ISO 639-3
GlottologNone
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese古官話
Simplified Chinese古官话
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinGǔ Guānhuà
Early Mandarin
Traditional Chinese早期官話
Simplified Chinese早期官话
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinZǎoqí Guānhuà

Old Mandarin or Early Mandarin was the speech of northern China during the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (12th to 14th centuries). New genres of vernacular literature were based on this language, including verse, drama and story forms, such as the qu and sanqu.

The phonology of Old Mandarin has been inferred from the ʼPhags-pa script, an alphabet created in 1269 for several languages of the Mongol empire, including Chinese, and from two rime dictionaries, the Menggu Ziyun (1308) and the Zhongyuan Yinyun (1324). The rhyme books differ in some details but show many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects, such as the reduction and disappearance of final stops and the reorganization of the four tones of Middle Chinese.