In the Lithuanian language as used before the 20th century, three distinctive regional variants are usually noted: the “South-Western Highland” (East Prussia), “Central” or “Samogitian” (in the coastal area east of Klaipėda), and “Eastern” (around Vilnius, centre of Lithuania). The “Eastern” variant had died out at the beginning of the 18th century; the “Central” variant eventually converged towards the Highland one and became known as the “Samogitian-Lithuanian” language. Until the 19th century, writing was dominated by the South-Western Highland tradition (e.g. a grammar by G. Ostermeyer, 1791; dictionaries by Ph. Ruhig, 1737, and K.G. Mielcke, 1800, with an introduction by Immanuel Kant). This variant had an institutional centre in the philologically-minded German scholars around the University of Königsberg; the Eastern and Samogitian variants were centered on the Polish-Lithuanian University of Vilnius.

In East Prussia, the abolition of serfdom (1807) and the systematization of education (as of 1819) meant that publishing diffused to other places besides Königsberg – e.g. Tilsit. German scholars were divided, until into the 19th century, as to whether Lithuanian (like Latvian) was a separate language or a mixture of Slavic, Gothic, and Finnish; as this taxonomical status was being clarified, East Prussian scholars noted the decreasing number of Lithuanian-speakers and the dearth of literacy in the language. Clerics in the Lutheran Church all argued, in Herderian fashion, that the language was a divine gift and a necessary conduit for religious instruction (Ostermeyer, Ist es anzurathen die litthauische Sprache zu verdrängen und die Litthauer mit den Deutschen zu verschmelzen?, 1817; L. Bacz, Versuch einer Geschichte der Dichtkunst in Preussen, 1824).

The key figure in this Lithuanian language interest was L. Rhesa (1776–1840), head of the Lithuanian seminar of the University of Königsberg, which he saved from imminent closure in 1809. His Geschichte der litauischen Bibel (1816) saw Lithuanians as the descendants of the ancient Prussians; he compared Lithuanian to Ancient Greek in his collection of Prussian ballads Prutena (2 vols, 1809-25), and distinguished Lithuanians and Latvians from the Slavs in his article Über Litauische Volkspoesie (1818), followed by Dainos: oder Litauische Volkslieder (1825).

Prior to the 1831 rising, 27 prize essays on Lithuanian were proposed by the Warsaw “Association of the Friends of Science”, eliciting submissions from staff at the University of Vilnius. These addressed the extent of the Lithuanian language area and the relations between Samogitian, Lithuanian, and Latvian. F.K.M. Bohusz (1746–1820) published O początkach narodu i języka litewskiego rozprawa (“On the origins of the Lithuanian nation and language”, 1808), extolling the Lithuanian language as a mother to other languages, as perfect as Greek. It incurred the criticism of the Vilnius-based historian and later revolutionary Joachim Lelewel (Rzut oka na dawność litewskich narodów i związki ich z herulami, 1808). The Samogitian idiom was promoted most prominently by the philologist Simonas Stanevičius, who also published a collection of Samogitian folk ballads, Dainos Žemaičių (1829), and by Simonas Daukantas, whose history, Darbai senųjų lietuvių ir žemaičių (1822), advocated the ancient authenticity of Lithuanian and Samogitian as the Greek or Latin of the North. This Vilnius-based interest was bereft of an institution following the closure of the university there in the wake of the 1831 rising. Scholarly interest, to the extent that it was not pursued in Prussian Königsberg, shifted to Russian centres of learning, primarily St Petersburg.

With the birth of comparative linguistics, Lithuanian gained fresh scholarly interest, witness the very title of Franz Bopp’s Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Armenischen, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litthauischen, Gothischen und Deutschen (1833-52); Rasmus Rask and other linguists accepted the language’s autonomous status, independent alongside the Slavic and German languages; August Schleicher, the major mid-century scholar on Lithuanian, undertook the study of Lithuanian in Königsberg in 1852, and in 1856 published the first scholarly, influential Litauische Grammatik, which used many folklore samples taken from earlier texts and argued for a common Balto-Slavic proto-language. It was revised, and its dialect base was broadened, by the Handbuch der litauischen Sprache (1857), by J. Juška, a graduate of the University of Kharkov. A full translation was made by Antanas Baranauskas in 1879.

In East Prussia, German educational policies also benefited the production of books in Lithuanian: calendars (e.g. Prūsiškos kalendros, 1847-62) and periodicals (e.g. Nusidavimai apie evangelijos praplatinimą tarp žydų ir pagonų, intermittently from 1832 to 1932). Prussian studies on regional cultures and antiquities also encompassed Lithuania Minor; A.G. Krause’s Litauen und dessen Bewohner (1834) saw Lithuanian as the oldest dialect of Latvian and a branch of the region’s aboriginal population (Uhrbewohner). At Königsberg, the philologist G.H.F. Nesselmann was among the first to use the term “Baltic”; his Die Sprache der alten Preussen (1845) advocated the preservation of the language, and his influential Wörterbuch der litauischen Sprache (1851) combined older written and recent oral sources sent to him by pastors and teachers. The Litauische Volkslieder (1853) included songs, both in the original and in German translation, contributed by Rhesa, Stanevičius, and Daukantas. Nesselman also threw his weight behind Daina žemaitiška as a national-foundational epic (although it was in reality a latter-day production by Silvestras Valiūnas). Another scholarly language-preservationist was Friedrich Kurschat, head of the Königsberg Lithuanian seminary and a self-identifying Lithuanian (Beiträge zur Kunde der Litauischen Sprache, 1843).

In Russian-governed Lithuania, mid-century developments were deeply influenced by a succession of political crises and turning-points: two insurrections (1831 and 1864), the abolition of serfdom (1861), and the closure of Vilnius University (1832). The Samogitian bishop M. Valančius obtained permission to teach the language in Catholic parishes alongside Russian; while this permission lasted (1841-64), textbooks were published as well as calendars (e.g. Metu skajtlus ukiszkas, 1846-64; publication resumed under a different title and in Cyrillic, 1866-67). Catholic priests were in the forefront of language initiatives; witness K. Kossakowski’s Grammatyka języka źmudzkiego (1832; a Samogitian grammar written in Polish).

Later, scholarly interest and intellectual networks shifted to Russia. In St Petersburg, Daukantas met Valančius (1842), laying the basis for their joint life in Samogitia (1851-55). In his Samogitian history (Istorija žemaitiška, 1836-37, but only published in 1893-97) Daukantas celebrated the language as God’s gift to the nation. Internationally, the language remained an intense object of interest for comparative linguists all over Europe, many of whom made field trips to the country. Thus, the Finn J. Mikkola made two visits to Plokščiai (1894-95), which was becoming a meeting point for international linguists. He also collected songs with V. Kudirka, who wrote in Varpas (1895) that Lithuanian folk songs were translated into Finnish, probably due to Mikkola’s wife, and performed by Finnish women (dressed in Lithuanian folk costumes) at a Finnish song festival. These linguists, like F.F. Fortunatov, also made suggestions for the normalization of Lithuanian orthography.

Meanwhile, following the creation of the German Empire in 1871, German became the only national official language in the Prussian lands, and the public use of Lithuanian was largely restricted to villages and churches. There was, however, a lively book trade for the Lithuanian market on the Russian side of the border, where a ban on all non-Cyrillic print was in force; printing and smuggling of Lithuanian books into Russia was tacitly tolerated. Kurschat travelled to Russian Lithuania repeatedly (1872, 1874, 1875), where he collected linguistic material (with the help of local intellectuals like Valančius and Baranauskas). His Grammatik der littauischen Sprache appeared in 1876, denouncing the impoverishment of the language as a result of foreign (Polish and Russian) influences and emigration; simplified adaptations for school use were repeatedly made. Kurschat later published a Wörterbuch der littauischen Sprache (2 vols, 1870-83).

A significant crystallization of language interests took place in associations, following the example of Lithuanians in East Prussia, where circles around Nesselmann formed a Litauische literarische Gesellschaft (Tilsit, 1880; officially incorporated in 1899; offshoot of an earlier Altpreussische Gesellschaft) after the model of analogous Latvian and Estonian ones (in Mitau/Mintauja, present-day Jelgava, and in Dorpat, present-day Tartu, respectively). The philological status of the language (also attested to by many articles about it that appeared in academic-philological periodicals across Europe) ensured an international membership and influence, also by way of its periodical, Mitteilungen der litauischen literarischen Gesellschaft (1880-1912). Among its publications was Jonas Šliūpas’s bibliography of ancient and modern Lithuanian texts, Lietuviškieji raštai ir raštininkai (1890).

These scholarly publications were flanked by the newly-established Lithuanian newspaper Auszra, which had a more popular interest and target audience, and a more overtly political-emancipatory agenda. In the field of sociability, the Litauische literarische Gesellschaft was supplemented by the cultural organization Birutė (1885, Tilsit), one of whose main aims was to develop and popularize the Lithuanian language.

In Russia-governed Lithuania, the language was introduced into schools and priest seminaries in later 1860s and 1870s; Bishop Antanas Baranauskas played a pivotal role. He had studied in St Petersburg and written an essay (in Polish) on Samogitian and Lithuanian in the late 1850s (O mowie ludu źmudzkiego i litiewskiego). His grammar Mokslas lietuviškos kalbos was published anonymously in 1876; his later literary writings promoted the principle of polyphony: a standard form accommodating subsidiary dialect variants. His article O litovskom jazyke i pravopisaniej (1878) surveyed eleven dialects in order to establish their common core and diverging variants. The brothers Jonas and Antanas Juška, known for their folk-song collections, published a Lithuanian-Polish-Russian dictionary in 1897 (repr. 1904, 1922) and used an alphabet combining Latin and Cyrillic characters.

The definitive standardizer of the Lithuanian language was Jonas Jablonskis, who had studied philology at the University of Moscow under Fortunatov, and whose teaching career took him across the Baltic lands. As chief editor of the first Lithuanian newspapers (Auszra, 1883-86; Varpas, 1889-1905), he was involved in discussions on language use and had the outreach to propagate his standard, the South-Western Highland version, with a grammatical position in the tradition of Kurschat. His own Lithuanian grammar, Lietuviškos kalbos gramatika, was published in 1901 under the pen name Petras Kriaušaitis; his syntax, Lietuvių kalbos sintaksė, appeared in 1911.