This volume presents the results of in-depth studies of grammars, vocabularies, and religious texts, dating from the sixteenth – nineteenth century. The researches involve twenty indigenous Mesoamerican and South American languages, including: Nahuatl (Mexico), Pukina (Peru); Tehuelche (Patagonia).

An uncompromising study of the fictions, the failures, and the real man behind the myth of Magellan. With Straits, celebrated historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto subjects the surviving sources to the most meticulous scrutiny ever, providing a timely and engrossing biography of the real Ferdinand Magellan. The truth that Fernández-Armesto uncovers about Magellan’s life, his character, and the events of his ill-fated voyage offers up a stranger, darker, and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been celebrated for half a millennium. Magellan did not attempt––much less accomplish––a journey around the globe. In his lifetime he was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant, self-condemned to destruction, and dismissed as a failure. Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero and discloses the reality of the man, probing the passions and tensions that drove him to adventure and drew him to disaster. We see the mutations of his character: pride that became arrogance, daring that became recklessness, determination that became ruthlessness, romanticism that became irresponsibility, and superficial piety that became, in adversity, irrational exaltation. As the real Magellan emerges, so do his real ambitions, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold. Straits is a study in failure and the paradox of Magellan’s career, showing that renown is not always a reflection of merit but often a gift and accident of circumstance.

When the first European missionaries arrived on other continents, it was decided that the indigenous languages would be used as the means of christianization. There emerged the need to produce grammars and dictionaries of those languages. The study of this linguistic material has so far not received sufficient attention in the field of linguistic historiography. This volume is the first published collection of papers on missionary linguistics world-wide; it represents the insights of recent research, containing an introduction and papers on methodology, meta-historiography, the historical and cultural background. The book contains studies about early-modern linguistic works written in Spanish, Portuguese, English and French, describing among others indigenous languages from North America and Australia, Maya, Quechua, Xhosa, Japanese, Kapampangan, and Visaya. Topics dealt with include: innovations of individual missionaries in lexicography, grammatical analysis, phonology, morphology, or syntax; creativity in descriptive techniques; differences and/or similarities of works from different continents, and different religious backgrounds (Catholic or Protestant).

The object of this volume is the study of missionary translation practices which occur within a colonial context of political domination and spiritual conquest. Missionary translation becomes especially manifest in bilingual ethnographic descriptions, in (bilingual) catechisms and in the missionaries’ lexicographic condensation of bilingual dictionaries. The study of these instances permits the analysis and interpretation of their guiding principles, their translation practice and underlying reasoning. It also permits the modern linguist to discern semantic changes that can be revealed in these missionary translations over certain periods. Up to now there has hardly been any study available that focuses on translation in missionary sources, of the different traditions in the Americas or Asia. This book will fill this gap, addressing the legacy of missionary translation practices and theories, the role of translation in evangelization and its particular form in the context of colonialism, the creation of loans from Spanish or Latin or equivalents or paraphrases in the indigenous languages in texts and dictionaries as translation strategies followed in bilingual editions. The process of acculturation and transculturation imposed by European religious systems is noted. This volume presents research on languages such as Nahuatl, Tarascan (Pur’épecha), Zapotec, Tamil, Chinese, Japanese, Pangasinán, and other Austronesian languages from the Philippines.

Panare, also known as E'ñapa Woromaipu, is a seriously endangered Cariban language spoken by about 3,500 people in Central Venezuela. A Typological Grammar of Panare by Thomas E. Payne and Doris L. Payne, is a full length linguistic grammar, written from a modern functional/typological perspective.

A Grammar of Murui (Bue) by Katarzyna Wojtylak is the first complete description of Murui (Witoto, Huitoto) spoken in Colombia and Peru. It is an important contribution to the study of Witotoan languages and linguistic typology of Northwest Amazonia.

This is the second volume to be dedicated to the pioneering linguistic work produced by the religious missionaries who, within the scope of the European colonial enterprises along the period 1550–1850, described dozens of autochthonous languages, many of which are only known today thanks to their endeavours. The twelve papers joint in the present volume — which dedicated special attention to the orthographical and phonological dimension of their work — provide a comprehensive picture of the descriptive problems faced by these linguists avant la lettre, notably: the difficulties faced before the less familiar features of these languages, such as vowel quantity, accentuation, tonality, nasalization, glottalization, ‘gutturalization’; the building of (re)definitions and the creation of a new metalanguage, like ‘saltillo’, ‘guturaciones’, etc.; The book elucidates the creativity and innovations proposed by individual missionaries and the instructive and pedagogical dimension of their work.