The few, and generally obsolete Tagalog words of Arabic and/or Persian origin that can be found in old and modern dictionaries are fragments from a period when they must have been more numerous, although their number cannot ever have been very large. Some illustrate how Manila was an outpost of the Bornean polity based in Brunei, itself a part of the Indo-Javanese system, while others point at direct contacts with traders who spoke some varieties of Arabic, but were probably Indians, Persians, Armenians from Persia or even Turks. Thus these terms entered Tagalog over a very long period that lasted until the 19th Century.

Tagalog, spoken in Manila and the surrounding provinces, Luzon, Philippines, is a major language of the western branch of the Austronesian family. The bulk of this book is devoted to parallel words also found in Malay, a member of the same branch. These words are either cognates descending from Proto-Austronesian or borrowings from the same foreign languages. Other cognates were found in Javanese, Malagasy, Tahitian and even Siamese. The last third of the book deals with Sanskrit, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and English loanwords.

No doubt this book will meet the demand of historians, linguists, mathematicians, numismatists, philippinologists and tagalists as well as all the readers interested in the unusual. Like the 1992 article on which it is based, this book is the first one in English to broach the difficult subject of numeral expressions in Old Tagalog and the various concepts and measures associated with them. The book is about ten times as long as the article because it comprises a lexicon that deals with gold, money, taxes, usury, units of measurement, etc. Examples are numerous and generally drawn from such classics as the grammar of San Joseph (1610), Pinpin's manual (1610), the dictionaries of San Buenaventura (1613) and Noceda & Sanlucar (1754, 1860). Differently from the majority of publications on Tagalog, all the terms and examples are fully accented according to a precise system developed by the author, and explained in an appendix.

The Historical Dictionary of the Philippines, Third Edition contains a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and several hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries.

From ampapagot (Cebuano for triggerfish) to ligaya (bread with red filling from Bicol) to ukuh ukuh (a Tausug dish resembling a sea urchin risotto), this dictionary gathers more than 8,000 terms relating to food ingredients, dishes, cooking styles, preparation techniques, and utensils, among others. For anyone who cooks or simply loves Filipino food, this book is a vital reference and an excellent cookbook supplement.