The supradialectal or multi-dialectal character of older texts, from the oldest surviving record of basic prayers from the end of the 14 th century onwards, was a constant until the establishment of the standard Slovene language in the mid-19 th century. Language contact, social variety, spatial and translation influences helped shape the written language of the pre-standard period and the standard language from the 16 th to the 19 th century. Identifiable dialect influences from the Upper and Lower Carniolan and Littoral dialect groups in medieval occasional texts are joined, from the 16 th century onwards, by Styrian and Pannonian influences, which took on a more distinct profile from the
mid-18 th century. The mixing of dialect and standard language elements from the 16 th to the 18 th century will be presented through texts that are related in terms of content but varietally diverse, some of them printed but most in manuscript form. The question of which dialect elements can be preserved in the standard language and which abandoned (e.g. dialectal reflexes of phonemes in long syllables, quantitative and intensitive vowel reduction in short and unstressed syllables, consonant
change) has been answered by some authors in an independent and systematic way, taking into account the standard language tradition or synchronous grammatical norms, but by others spontaneously and inconsistently, as can be seen in language variation and hyperorrectiveness. Bibilical translations (Dalmatin’s 1584 and Japelj’s Catholic translation 1764–1802) are more linguistically measured and more notably supradialectal. Because written texts do not reflect the composition of regional language variations, but rather only individual elements, they can only temporally confirm the existence of language elements and contribute new data to aid understanding of the development
of language on every language level.
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