Although a written literary language for the entire Slovene population had been established as early as the 16th century, mostly through devotional writings and publications, the formation of contemporary Slovene went through a critical transition in the 19th century as part of intensely political nation-building processes. New publications started to reflect dialect differences (the speech of Styria, Carniola and Carinthia as well as the literary language of the Prekmurje region). Writers and philologists faced a dilemma common to many language cultivation movements at the time: either to maintain a uniform literary standard or to allow diverse versions and standards. In addition, there was the scenario (endorsed by, among others, Stanko Vraz) of a common Slavonic (“Illyrian”) language also taking the speakers of Slovene under its wing. Against this scenario, there was a strong Slovene particularism, which emphasized especially the grammatical feature of a “dualis” (a separate grammatical form between the singular and the plural, indicating binates). In the new comparative-historical linguistics, applied to the Slavic languages in the 1820s by Josef Dobrovský and the Slovene Jernej Kopitar, this feature came to be seen as an Indo-European archaism and hence as a prestigious marker of the long historical roots and separate development of Slovene.

Political and cultural developments (the rise of periodicals, school education) favoured the creation of a single literary language. This manifested itself also in the climate of the 1848 revolutions, with the first Slovene political programme, Zedinjena Slovenija (“United Slovenia”). It advocated the free use of the Slovene language – which required a common standard free from regional variants. Existing forms leaning predominantly towards the Central dialects would have to be adapted so as to accommodate other dialects, e.g. the Eastern (Styrian) one. In 1851, after numerous discussions, a consensus was finally reached to introduce the so called “new forms” in the literary language. These were based on the Central Slovene variant adapted to general usage, and reactivated some older (historical but obsolete) language-forms.

The next issue to emerge concerned the status of Slovene alongside German as a language of official administration. The social prestige of Slovene had dwindled since the mid-18th century as that of German had risen. Patriotically-minded Slovene intellectuals assertively endorsed the public use of Slovene, and advocated literacy agendas to that effect. The production of poetical texts was also felt to boost linguistic morale; it is against this background that the work of France Prešeren was of the greatest significance and influence. From 1843 on, Janez Bleiweis’s newspaper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice (“Farming and handicraft bulletin”) complemented this poetic agenda with a more diverse broad-impact medium. The use of the Slovene language by upper- and middle-class intellectuals and its assertion against German gradually became more politically charged as the language increasingly signified the common bonding factor of Slovenians as a nation. The 1849 constitution in theory gave equal status to all nations and their languages under the Habsburg Crown; but its implementation was slow and imperfect. The struggle for the rights of Slovenians was turned into a struggle for a general use of the Slovene language, which was almost fully achieved by the end of the century.

Throughout the century these developments were waymarked by numerous grammars (among the authors being Kopitar, Valentin Vodnik, Leopold Šmigoc, Peter Dajnko, Franc Metelko, Anton Murko, Anton Janežič and indirectly also Fran Miklošič) and dictionaries (by Vodnik, Murko, Janežič, Matija Cigale and especially Maks Pleteršnik). The written language needed to be stabilized and standardized; its grammatical structure and word formation needed to be reviewed. Also, the Slovenian literary lexicon required consideration: what should the professional language look like, what should be done with German-derived loanwords, what attitude should be taken towards loanwords derived from Serbian, Croatian and other Slavonic languages?

Parallel to these developments an orthographical discussion took place. Kopitar’s 1808 grammar called for a spelling reform along the lines proposed by Bohorič (and hence known as bohoričica) on the principle that every sound should have its own letter. This triggered a vehement debate, known as the “Alphabet war”, between his followers and those of Matija Čop, while various orthographic standards were competing to be included in school books. The various preferences were interpreted as opposing (Illyrian or Austro-Slavic) political orientations: e.g. representing sounds like /tʃ/ (nowadays rendered with a Czech-derived “haček”) by means of a Cyrillic Ч or the old bohoričica spelling “zh”. The circle of followers of Čop carried the day: competing orthographies like metelčica and dajnčica (named after their authors, Metelko and Dajnko) were banned from schools in 1833 and 1838. Instead, the discussion opened a path for a new writing called gajica (named after Gaj), which gained dominance in the spelling of Slovene in 1845 and is still used today. The deeper significance of the “Alphabet war” addressed the future image and the role of Slovene. Here too, the followers of Kopitar and of the Čop-Prešeren circle were at odds. Kopitar was a gradualist and envisaged a purified peasant language, intended in the first instance for use in less demanding positions and contexts, while Prešeren’s ambition was to have Slovene immediately introduced into the higher areas of artistic expression. While Prešeren himself triumphantly demonstrated the viability of his ambitions, many of Kopitar’s ideas (later taken over by Fran Levstik) continued to play an important role – mainly in sentence formation and in the need to exclude German words.