Lower Yangtze Mandarin is one of the most divergent and least mutually-intelligible groups of Mandarin dialects, as it neighbours the Wu, Hui, and Gan groups of varieties of Chinese. It is also known as Jiang–Huai Mandarin , named after the Yangtze and Huai Rivers. Lower Yangtze dialects are distinguished from most other Mandarin varieties by their retention of a final glottal stop in words that ended in a stop consonant in Middle Chinese. During the Ming dynasty and the early Qing dynasty, the lingua franca of administration was based on Lower Yangtze dialects. During the 19th century, the base shifted to the Beijing dialect.
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