Old Mandarin

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.

The name "Mandarin", as a direct translation of the Chinese Guānhuà (官話, 'language of the officials'), was initially applied to the lingua franca of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which was based on various northern dialects.

[3] A rare exception was Shao Yong's adaptation of the rime tables, without reference to the Qieyun tradition, to describe the phonology of 11th-century Kaifeng.

[6] The first alphabetic writing system for Chinese was created by the Tibetan Buddhist monk and Sakya school leader Drogön Chögyal Phagpa on the orders of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan.

[7] The alphabet shows some influence of traditional phonology, in particular including voiced stops and fricatives that most scholars believe had disappeared from Mandarin dialects by that time.

The 'Phags-pa script and the Menggu Ziyun tend to retain more traditional elements, but are useful in filling in the spartan description of the Zhongyuan Yinyun.

The language shows many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects, such as the reduction and disappearance of final stop consonants and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese tones.

[18] The Late Middle Chinese rime tables divide finals between 16 rhyme classes (shè 攝), each described as either "inner" (nèi 內) or "outer" (wài 外), thought to indicate a close or open vowel respectively.

[21] The remaining -m codas merged with -n before the early 17th century, when the late Ming standard was described by European missionaries Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault.

[44] In Middle Chinese, syllables with vocalic or nasal codas could have one of three pitch contours, traditionally called "even", "rising" and "departing".

[50] The flourishing vernacular literature of the period also shows distinctively Mandarin vocabulary and syntax, though some, such as the third-person pronoun tā (他), can be traced back to the Tang dynasty.