Abstract
The paper falls into two parts. In the first place, we try to tease out the sound shape of early modern Spanish in the light of Southern Min pronunciation of the Chinese characters used in the transliteration of Spanish lexical items. On the strength of previous literature on Spanish consonantal systems at early and present stages and the consonantal system of Southern Min and its subvariety we have been able to substantiate the claim of Southern Min as the most likely candidate for the rendition of early modern Spanish sounds in a more faithful manner as well as pinpoint the earlier features of some consonants of Spanish which are no longer in existence in modern Spanish. Secondly, we adduce a range of examples to show the richness and diversity of lexical items that attest the imprint of many facets of Spanish in its adaption to the new linguistic milieu in Luzon, a newly acquired colony, and a handful of words from a range of languages such as Tagalog, Malay, Nahuatl and even Arabic have found their way into Spanish.