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Today, dictionaries of most languages with alphabetic and syllabic writing systems list words in alphabetical or some analogous phonetic order.In many languages, words are grouped together according to their true or normal origin ("root"), and these roots are arranged alphabetically. If English dictionaries were arranged like this, the words "import", "export", "support", "report", "porter", "port", "important" and "transportation" would all be listed under "port". This method has the advantage that all words of a common origin are listed together, but the disadvantage is that you have to know how to disassemble all prefixes of a word before you look it up. Some Sanskrit dictionaries and all Arabic dictionaries work like this.Dictionaries of languages using ideographic writing systems, such as Chinese and Japanese, may be sorted either according to one of many schemes based on the component parts of the characters (number of strokes, overall shape, or pronunciation of each letter), or according to the pronunciation of the full words when spelled phonetically. Due to the unfamiliarity of Chinese speakers with phonetic spellings, phonetic sorts are particularly unsuitable for Chinese dictionaries, while the fluency of Japanese speakers with kana makes kana spelling the most common and convenient method to sort Japanese dictionaries.
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