In this article I provide an explanation for Malkiel's (1946: 314) observation that /rn/, /nr/, and /rr/ variants of Latin /nVr/ outnumbered /ndr/ in the earliest Old Spanish texts (terre, terne, tenrre ‘I will have’), and an explanation of why metathesis appears to have been as predominant as /nr/ and /rr/. First, I posit intermediate, pre-syncope [nej] variants of Latin /nVr/, whose reduced vowel and tap [j] increased the probability of perceptual metathesis from [nej] to /rn/. Second, the [nej] variants gave metathesis a head start over [rr] and [ndr], since these latter two variants could not surface until syncope produced [nr]. Finally, the occurrence of many /nVr/ sequences in the newly created future/conditional stems of the verbs VENIRE, TENERE, PONERE, meant that the reductive effects of grammaticalization (morphologization) exacerbated the listeners' difficulty in perceiving the correct order between [n] and [j], thereby increasing further the probability of perceptual metathesis.