The Sichuanese once spoke their own variety of Spoken Chinese called Ba-Shu Chinese, or Old Sichuanese, before it became extinct during the Ming dynasty. Now most of them speak Sichuanese Mandarin. The Minjiang dialects are thought by some linguists[who?] to be a bona fide descendant of Old Sichuanese, but there is no conclusive evidence whether Minjiang dialects are derived from Old Sichuanese or Southwestern Mandarin.[citation needed]