Jesuits and language learning, documenting and teaching: A holistic approach to colonial linguistics and learning practices in the early modern period.

This article deals with the learning practices that Portuguese- and French-speaking members of the Jesuit order applied in the two Romance colonies of India and New France to learn local languages for missionary purposes in the 16th–18th centuries. The study is based on an interdisciplinary and process-oriented holistic approach to dealing with sources from these two different contexts and allows for a better understanding of the order's practices in learning, documenting and passing on local languages within the order and beyond. Starting with examining the preparatory phase in Europe, we focus on the Jesuits' language learning experience, their practices in the field and their attempts and difficulties in describing and documenting local languages against the backdrop of European languages and existing and changing language attitudes. Furthermore, we focus on the Jesuits' goal of transferring their knowledge within diverse networks and try to provide an outlook on a more holistic way of dealing with sources from missionary contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]