The <i>Bocabulario de la Lengua Sangleya por las Letraz de el A.B.C</i>. (Manila, ca. 1617)

Abstract The Bocabulario de la Lengua Sangleya por las Letraz de el A.B.C . stands out among the Spanish missionary oeuvres dedicated to the documentation of the Chinese vernacular spoken by the Sangley community in Manila around the year 1600. As opposed to other vocabularies and dictionaries of the same epoch, it contains not only single line Hokkien-Spanish entries, but many additional pieces of linguistic and cultural information including example sentences selected and designed for conversational use during field work regarding proselytization. The Bocabulario is a complex text where several discourse layers can be distinguished, one traced back to the sources utilized by the compilers, another one implemented by the compilers themselves while following their didactic and practical goals, and a last one by the copyists who do not seem to have grown up with the European tradition of scripturality.