This paper analyses from a historical-developmental, sociolinguistic perspective the coming into being or development of standard functional varieties: in particular technical texts from the fields of agriculture, administration and alternative medicine. It is ascertained that, terminologically and syntactically, these reflect sustainable linguistic-varietal development. This can be seen in the search for suitable original terms and syntactic patterns suited to the Slovene way of thinking or of expressing things, which took place in the light of contact with foreign languages (German, Latin, Slavic). The necessary level was achieved in the second half of the 19th century, when there becomes apparent a balanced linguistic-varietal manner of expression in the relevant areas (the economy, the humanities, the natural sciences). A mixture of linguistic elements from different functional varieties
(colloquial, literary) is characteristic of popular scientific texts (e.g. the natural sciences, topographic names).
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