Sprachgefühln.

1902 J. B. Greenough & G. L. Kittredge Words ix. 127 Men of genius may take great liberties with their mother tongue without offence; but..let them violate its Sprachgefühl, and their mannerism becomes, as it were, a foreign language.

1914 Pedagogical Seminary June 256 If there is to be instruction in modern foreign languages the age of about ten is for most children the best to begin it. If it comes before this the child has not developed sufficient Sprachgefühl for his own language, has not developed sufficient idiomatic sense of it to avoid the danger of interference.

1938 E. Partridge World of Words ii. vi. 163 The Sprachgefühl, feeling for speech, exercises a pervasive influence in a language so long cultivated as English.

1953 K. Jackson Lang. & Hist. in Early Brit. 682 It may be thought that the language was in some way committed by its Sprachgefühl to a penultimate accent.

1976 Amer. Speech 1973 48 224 Whether this development is associated with the loss of sprachgefühl in a community where the use of a language is declining is a possibility to be considered.