This paper examines the ecology of Slovene in the twentieth century by focusing on two key emergent themes. It focuses firstly on monolingualism as a key goal for Slovene language planners, starting with their efforts to create a standard language with no German influences in the nineteenth century, and continuing in their work to prevent Serbo-Croat influence in Yugoslavia in the twentieth century. A particular focus of the paper is on how standardisation enabled an emergent Slovene-speaking elite to accumulate linguistic capital and, upon the dissolution of the Habsburg state, to become solely culturally and politically dominant. The second focus is on how the gradual development of a language ecology dominated by prescriptive practices and a strongly nationalist language ideology allowed the elite to maintain its dominance over the allocation of linguistic capital despite the social upheaval caused by the turbulent political and economic context of the twentieth century.