reineke wrote:For major western european languages: the target language.
50 years ago and today monolingual "native" grammars were in the required literature at my university along with bilingual and monolingual grammars aimed at foreign students. Even in high school the teacher recommended a monolingual grammar. At university for each language there was a "bible" - a monolingual or bilingual (mother tongue) grammar that the students and professors preferred. Language students would study separately about comparative romance linguistics etc but this was never a major focus for regular students. I got a kick recently reading about Spanish in Italian (for about 30 mins) but I wouldn't have enjoyed it if didn't already have a living, wiggly "base" in romance languages.
Bilingual vs monolingual dictionaries require separate considerations. Both were readily available to students.
All these tools can be equally useful or useless.
So what would you say is the grammar "bible" for German in German for foreign students?
(I tend to use Hammer's which is in English.)