Development of Standard Spoken Chinese before the late nineteenth century

Base of Standard Spoken Chinese in early times

The Chinese civilization originated in the Yellow River areas. It is recorded that there were as many as 1,800 clans and tribes inhabiting areas along the Yellow River towards the end of the Shang dynasty. As commercial and military activities among these speakers of different languages increased, the need for a lingua franca naturally arose. The earliest form of such a lingua franca, it is generally believed, took shape on the basis of the language spoken in what is now known as Yinxu in the west of Henan province, which was the capital of the Shang dynasty between about 1324 and 1066 BC. The so-called jiaguwén is the written, and highly condensed, counterpart of this lingua franca.

The subsequent Zhou dynasty marked the beginning of the feudal system, with more than 130 states established in the early period of the dynasty, covering various dialectally differentiated areas. Subsequent wars among the states resulted in the collapsing of the smaller polities into several large states. Local dialects distinctive of the major states developed, marking the beginning of the differentiation of Chinese dialects into several major groups.

As the major dialects of Chinese respectively evolved in different parts of the land, the importance of a standard spoken Chinese, both as a standard for formal purposes and as a lingua franca across dialects, increased as there were more and more administrative, diplomatic, cultural, and military exchanges between the central government and local states, and among the states themselves.