Following Martin (1953:4), the term Sino-Xenic (SX) has come to be used to refer collectively to Sino-Japanese (SJ), Sino-Korean (SK), and Sino-Vietnamese (SV), that is, to the respective reading traditions of Chinese characters as well as the corresponding lexical layers of loanwords in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. While the latter have played a major role in the formation of the modern lexicons of these languages, this article will only discuss the former in some detail. The existence of …