Sino-Xenic vocabularies are large-scale and systematic borrowings of the Chinese lexicon into the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese languages, none of which are genetically related to Chinese. The resulting Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese vocabularies now make up a large part of the lexicons of these languages. The pronunciation systems for these vocabularies originated from conscious attempts to consistently approximate the original Chinese sounds while reading Classical Chinese. They are used alongside modern varieties of Chinese in historical Chinese phonology, particularly the reconstruction of the sounds of Middle Chinese. Some other languages, such as Hmong–Mien and Kra–Dai languages, also contain large numbers of Chinese loanwords but without the systematic correspondences that characterize Sino-Xenic vocabularies. The term was coined in 1953 by the linguist Samuel E. Martin from the Greek ξένος (xénos, 'foreign'); Martin called these borrowings "Sino-Xenic dialects". Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese are the most widespread examples of sinoxenic languages. Indeed, these languages, by importing the Chinese writing system (sinograms), were enriched with a new vocabulary from China. Little by little, this vocabulary of the classical (written) Chinese language penetrated the vernacular languages, to the point that today, including the words invented in Japan on the basis of Sino-Japanese readings of sinograms, 49% of the words found in the Japanese dictionary Shinsen-kokugo-jiten (新選国語辞典, 2002) are Sino-xenic, without including a part of the hybrid terms (8%) which, in a number of cases, contain at least one sinoxenic element. Nevertheless, their weight in terms of frequency of use, appears clearly lower, especially in the oral language; for example, a 1995 study of television shows shows a share of only 18% for Sino-xenic vocabulary. Everyday conversations see this share reduced even further, as a trend.
Background
Limited borrowing from Chinese into Vietnamese and Korean occurred during the Han dynasty. During the Tang dynasty (618–907), Chinese writing, language and culture were imported wholesale into Vietnam, Korea and Japan. Scholars in those countries wrote in Literary Chinese and were thoroughly familiar with the Chinese classics, which they read aloud in systematic local approximations of Middle Chinese. With those pronunciations, Chinese words entered Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese in huge numbers. The plains of northern Vietnam were under Chinese control for most of the period from 111 BC to AD 938. After independence, the country adopted Literary Chinese as the language of administration and scholarship. As a result, there are several layers of Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese. The oldest loans, roughly 400 words dating from the Eastern Han, have been fully assimilated and are treated as native Vietnamese words. Sino-Vietnamese proper dates to the early Tang dynasty, when the spread of Chinese rime dictionaries and other literature resulted in the wholesale importation of the Chinese lexicon. Isolated Chinese words also began to enter Korean from the 1st century BC, but the main influx occurred in the 7th and 8th centuries after the unification of the peninsula by Silla. The flow of Chinese words into Korean became overwhelming after the establishment of civil service examinations in 958. Japanese has two well-preserved layers and a third that is also significant:
Go-on readings date to the introduction of Buddhism to Japan from Korea in the 6th century. Based on the name, they are widely believed to reflect pronunciations of Jiankang in the lower Yangtze area during the late Northern and Southern dynasties period. However, this cannot be substantiated, and Go-on appears to reflect an amalgam of different Chinese varieties transmitted through Korea. Kan-on readings are believed to reflect the standard pronunciation of the Tang period, as used in the cities of Chang'an and Luoyang. It was transmitted directly by Japanese who studied in China. Tōsō-on readings were introduced by followers of Zen Buddhism in the 14th century and are thought to be based on the speech of Hangzhou.
In contrast, vocabulary of Chinese origin in Thai, including most of the basic numerals, was borrowed over a range of periods from the Han (or earlier) to the Tang. Since the pioneering work of Bernhard Karlgren, these bodies of pronunciations have been used together with modern varieties of Chinese in attempts to reconstruct the sounds of Middle Chinese. They provide such broad and systematic coverage that the linguist Samuel Martin called them "Sino-Xenic dialects", treating them as parallel branches with the native Chinese dialects. The foreign pronunciations sometimes retain distinctions lost in all the modern Chinese varieties, as in the case of the chongniu distinction found in Middle Chinese rime dictionaries. Similarly, the distinction between grades III and IV made by the Late Middle Chinese rime tables has disappeared in most modern varieties, but in kan-on, grade IV is represented by the Old Japanese vowels i1 and e1 while grade III is represented by i2 and e2. Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese scholars later adapted the Chinese script to write their languages, using Chinese characters both for borrowed and native vocabulary. Thus, in Japanese, Chinese characters may have both Sino-Japanese readings (on'yomi) and native readings (kun'yomi). Similarly, in the chữ Nôm script used for Vietnamese until the early 20th century, some Chinese characters could represent both a Sino-Vietnamese word and a native Vietnamese word with similar meaning or sound to the Chinese word, but would often be marked with a diacritic when the native reading was intended. However, in the Korean mixed script, Chinese characters (hanja) are only used for Sino-Korean words. The character-based Vietnamese and Korean scripts have since been replaced by the Vietnamese alphabet and hangul respectively, although Korean does still use Hanja to an extent.
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