Chinese dictionaries have been sorted in various ways for at least two millennia, but there are some aspects which make alphabetic order sorting simpler: 1. Le

Chinese dictionaries have been sorted in various ways for at least two millennia, but there are some aspects which make alphabetic order sorting simpler: 1. Less ambiguous order: With classic Kangxi radicals for example, it's not always clear which radical to pick, and there is no clear order when there are multiple characters with the same radical and stroke count. There are other, more modern systems out there, but they all have some ambiguities. 2. Phonetic lookup: If you hear a word and don't know how to write it, you can just try to look it up phonetically. Unless the writing system is extremely perverse (I'm looking at you Ongloti, er, I mean English), you can kinda guess how it's written or at least how it starts. With Chinese characters that is not possible. Sure, Chinese dictionaries often have Pinyin or Zhuyin (Bopomofo) indexes, but Pinyin and Zhuyin are alphabets.