After the Wu Hu uprising, the Jin Emperor and many northern Chinese fled south, establishing the new capital Jiankang in what is modern day Nanjing.
Some linguists have studied the influence that Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin had on the Mandarin-based koiné spoken by the Ming dynasty.
Francisco Varo, a Dominican friar living in 17th century China pointed to Nanjing as one of several places Mandarin speech paralleled that of the elites.
Leipzig-based professor Georg von der Gabelentz even argued that the Nanjing dialect was preferable for scientific texts because it had fewer homophones:[7] Only in recent times has the northern dialect, pek-kuān-hoá, in the form [spoken] in the capital, kīng-hoá, begun to strive for general acceptance, and the struggle seems to be decided in its favor.
[7] Important works written about the Nanjing dialect include Syllabar des Nankingdialektes oder der correkten Aussprache sammt Vocabular by Franz Kühnert, and Die Nanking Kuanhua by K.
The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal offered that romanizing for both Nanjing and Beijing dialects was beneficial.
The journal explained that, for example, because 希 and 西 are pronounced the same in Beijing (pinyin: xī) but differently in Nanjing (with the latter being si), the Standard System retains the two spellings.