Mandarin was the common spoken language of administration of the Chinese empire during the
Ming and
Qing dynasties. It arose as a practical measure, to circumvent the mutual unintelligibility of the
varieties of Chinese spoken in different parts of China. Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined. The language was based on
northern dialects, initially those spoken around
Nanjing but later switching to
Beijing, and developed into
Standard Chinese in the 20th century.