Long-term experience with a tonal language molds pitch perception in specific ways, and thus Chinese speakers may not process pitch in English words – e.g., “Rose?” spoken as a question versus “Rose” spoken as a statement – in the same way as native speakers of non-tonal languages do. If so, what are those pitch processing differences and how do they influence Chinese recognition of English words? This study explored these questions by administering a primed lexical-decision task in English to skilled Chinese–English bilinguals and two control groups, to wit, Spanish–English and native English speakers. Prime-target pairs diverged in one sound and/or in pitch. Results displayed specific cross-language differences in pitch processing between the Chinese speakers and the control groups, confirming that experience with a tonal language molded the perception of English words' intonation. Moreover, such experience aids to integrate pitch into models of word-recognition for bilinguals of tonal and non-tonal languages.