This paper explores the relative contributions made by orthography, syllabic segment, and lexical tone in the word recognition and retrieval process. It also challenges recent assumptions regarding the role of orthography and tones in mental lexicon architecture. Using an implicit priming paradigm, a word recognition experiment was conducted with native speakers of two tonal languages, Chinese and Vietnamese, that use a logographic orthography and a phonetically-based orthography, respectively. Contradicting prior findings, response time differences indicate that orthography plays a crucial role in the word recognition process, a finding that has implications for Chinese language teaching.