At the beginning, I can tell you very clearly that from the emperor to the minister, the daily communication of the Qing Dynasty is all in Manchu, so don't be misled by the current Qing Palace film and television dramas. Whether it is Manchu or Han Chinese, it is a standard Mandarin, but there is no way, if the film and television dramas are manchu, who can understand it?
The Qing Dynasty was a feudal dynasty established by the Manchus, and from Nurhaci's time, it was normal for Manchus to speak Manchu. It was only in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, with a large number of Han officials entering the government hierarchy, that the Manchu emperor slowly learned to speak Chinese. But even so, when the emperor summoned Manchu officials, the communication between them was mainly in Manchu.
Why is it that the Han Chinese have hundreds of millions of people, and the Manchus are only a few million at best, but Chinese cannot become the official language of the court? Speaking of which, it was caused by the distrust of the Qing government towards the Han people. We know that at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty army trampled on the Central Plains, killed countless people, and suppressed rebellion everywhere, what Yangzhou Ten Days, what Jiading Three Massacres, all in order to force the Han people to submit.
After establishing national power, the Manchu rulers were even more afraid of the revolt of the Han Chinese, and they knew that if the Han people were not to resist, they would first have to suppress them culturally, and making Manchu the official language was the most appropriate measure. Some Han officials had to learn Manchu in order to squeeze in, so that the original strong sense of resistance to the Qing Dynasty was slowly forgotten.
Secondly, the heavy use of manchu is also out of the need for secrecy, of course, this is also to prevent Han officials. Some of the early foreign treaties were not in Chinese, such as the Treaty of Nebuchu signed between the Qing Dynasty and Russia.
It was only in the late Qing Dynasty that more and more foreigners entered China, and they felt very confused about the Manchu language, and they also found it particularly difficult to learn, and they learned to speak Chinese, which forced the Manchu Qing government to start putting the use of Chinese on the agenda. The Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty was a relatively enlightened emperor, and when he first received the emissaries of the British court, he used a Chinese translation.
However, at a great pilgrimage or a major festival, the emperor will definitely speak Manchu, and must not speak Chinese, because speaking Chinese will be regarded as disrespectful to the ancestors. And on such occasions, once the emperor spoke Chinese, there would definitely be Manchu ministers who jumped out and strongly opposed it. Unlike Han ministers, Manchu ministers tend to look ahead and look back when expressing their opinions, while Manchu ministers, adhering to the tradition since Nurhaci, say whatever they want and do not hesitate.
Because the Chinese proficiency of the Qing emperors was generally not high, they sometimes wrote typos, but they were unwilling to admit that they were wrong, so they often made mistakes. A typical example of the summer resort avoidance written by Kangxi is a typo, and many people have seen it, but no one dares to say it.
In a word, don't be misled by the current Qing Palace drama, in the Qing Dynasty, it was not manchu officials who rushed to learn Chinese, but Han officials who rushed to learn Manchu. Because I learn Manchu well, I can not only communicate well with the upper class, but sometimes I can also be favored. The most famous were Zhang Ying and Zhang Tingyu, the most powerful and the most favored by the Kangxi Emperor because they could speak Manchu fluently. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Manchu officials were collectively corrupt, and Han officials represented by Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang, and Zeng Guofan came to power, which made Chinese slowly become the mainstream.