Sixteenth Century - the Era of Establishment of Nation-Building Role of Language

The transition of Slovene from cultural to literary language is possible to justify directly mainly with the rise of deliberate linguistic functionalism in theological and pragmatic sense, and indirectly with the awareness of the onthologic value of language, which fostered the fundamental realization - at that point still implicit - that the hierarchization of languages by their value is not justified. The analysis of the Introduction to Bohoric's grammar separates the functionalistic and onthologic aspects in understanding language. Dalmatin's translation of the Bible realizes language competency of that era to such a degree that sixteenth century can be considered nation-building era for Slovenes.