Yes, this happened numerous times in history. An example would be the Chinese Communist government which implemented the simplified version of Chinese written language over the traditional, more complex version. Under the simplified version the complexity of characters were reduced as to make them easier to learn, and mainland China today uses the simplified Chinese for everyday use. Whereas in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan uses traditional characters.

The Chinese language today spoken in most of China (commonly known as "Mandarin" in the west) was also largely the product of government policy as well. Traditionally China had a unified written language but many different spoken vernaculars which are often incomprehensible to each other. Both the Nationalist and the Communists promoted Mandarin (the current version of which was largely based on the dialect of Chinese spoken in Beijing) as the standard spoken language for the purpose of administration and national unification. While some dialects remain (the most prominent of which is Cantonese), because of government policy most of China and Taiwan today speaks largely the same language whereas as 150 years ago the primary tongue across the country would have being largely different.