Daniel Jake Eberts
Language Learning through the Ages
This collection focuses on foreign language textbooks, with a particular eye to changes in language and the instruction thereof over time. For many a student, the language textbook is the primary, or even the sole, contact with a given foreign culture and tongue. How have our textbooks changed over time, and what does this reveal about the evolution of foreign language instruction as a field, as well as the target languages themselves?
-Daniel Jake Eberts, 4th-year winner
View his full essay
View his full bibliography
Selections from the collection
Photo by Alan Klehr, Churchill+Klehr
Photo by Alan Klehr, Churchill+Klehr
Photo by Alan Klehr, Churchill+Klehr
My favorite books are a set of three adorable pocket Dictionnaires from French into English, Italian and German, each no larger than a business card. I unearthed them from a milk crate in a weekend market in Europe one summer.
Photo by Alan Klehr, Churchill+Klehr
This is one of a set of three tiny, red pocket dictionaries that were designed to indeed be kept in one’s pocket. The spacing, of course, leaves little room for any sort of grammatical explanations or nuanced definitions.
Photo by Alan Klehr, Churchill+Klehr
Photo by Alan Klehr, Churchill+Klehr
This is one of the earlier books in my collection, and like many Native American grammars, was written by missionary. It is fascinating not only in its linguistic content, but also the rich cultural background provided via the stories and legends Riggs recorded—evidently for the first time in writing—of the Dakota people he lived with for so long. This edition is from 2004.