What is the accent of "Mandarin" in Ming Dynasty?

The "Mandarin" of the Ming Dynasty is Jianghuai Mandarin. Jianghuai Mandarin is distributed in most areas of Jiangsu Province, central Anhui Province, northeastern Hubei Province, parts of Jiujiang City in northern Jiangxi Province and individual dialect islands in other provinces, with a population of more than 70 million, mainly distributed in Jianghuai areas of Jiangsu and Anhui provinces.

Jianghuai dialect is quite different from northern mandarin in vocabulary, phonology and so on. Whether Jianghuai Mandarin is an independent Huai dialect or belongs to Mandarin dialect is still controversial.

Extended data:

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, western missionaries came to China, such as Matteo Ricci and Genig. When they saw the differences of dialects in different parts of China, they also found the existence of Putonghua. Learning Mandarin is the most convenient way to preach in various places. According to textual research, at that time, they thought Nanjing dialect was Mandarin.

Matteo Ricci and Giniger both studied Chinese in Nanjing, and wrote Miracle of Western Languages and Information of Western Confucianism respectively. They used their own Latin alphabet pinyin scheme to spell Chinese characters, and adopted the traditional Chinese five tones, namely, flat tone, rising tone, falling tone and entering tone, which were in line with the Nanjing dialect at that time. Until around the Opium War in the late Qing Dynasty, missionaries still believed that Nanjing dialect was the representative of Chinese.

Although Beijing has been the political, economic and cultural center since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the pronunciation of Putonghua is based on Beijing dialect and has become the predecessor of Putonghua. However, as far as China's tradition and historical geography are concerned, Nanjing dialect has always occupied an important position.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Jianghuai Mandarin