PinyinStrictSort - Sort Hànyǔ Pīnyīn in alphabetical order (fast)

Description:

Sort Chinese (Hànyǔ) Pīnyīn words into strict alphabetical order.

1. Compare words letter by letter, not syllable by syllable.
2. Respect diacritics (tone marks) as part of the letter, not merely as tiebreaker.

This approach reflects the fact that Hànyǔ Pīnyīn is written using the Latin alphabet — the key insight behind this implementation.

The ordering rules are:

1. Alphabetical order, including diacritics (tone marks)
2. Tone marks sorting order 0 < 1 < 2 < 3 < 4 (for example, a < ā < á < ǎ < à)
3. u before ü, U before Ü
4. lowercase and mixed-case before uppercase
5. Separators: apostrophe < hyphen < space
6. Numbers sort before letters.
7. All other characters sort behind, according to their Unicode value.

This project was initially inspired by by John DeFrancis in ABC Chinese-English Dictionary, Page xiii, Reader’s Guide, I. Arrangement of Entries, but sorting by PinyinStrictSort is much stricter and more straightforward.

Link to Wiki about the differences in word order between PinyinStrictSort and the ABC Chinese-English Dictionary: PinyinStrictSort Wiki

Acknowledgements and Credits:

• John DeFrancis (1911-2009), in passionate acknowledgment of the advocates of writing reform Lù Zhuāngzhāng (陆璋章,1854–1928), Lǔ Xùn (鲁迅, 1881–1936), Máo Dùn (Shěn Yànbīng, 茅盾, 沈雁冰, 1896–1981), Wáng Lì (王力, 1900–1988) and Lù Shūxiāng (吕叔湘, 1904–1998), and Zhōu Yǒuguāng (周有光, 1905–2017).
• Mark Swofford of Bǎnqiáo, Táiwān: summarised the rules outlined by John DeFrancis on his blog, thus keeping them available to the world.
• Alfons Grabher: Idea, concept, coding, prompting, testing, and driving the development of PinyinStrictSort.
• Grok (xAI), ChatGPT 4o: Coding the implementation with flair and precision.

Usage

Python

from pinyin_strict_sort import pinyin_strict_sort

# Sort strings
words = ["bǎozhàng", "Bǎoyǔ", "bǎoyù"]
print(pinyin_strict_sort(words))  # ['bǎoyù', 'bǎozhàng', 'Bǎoyǔ']

# Sort dictionaries
dicts = [
    {"pinyin": "bǎozhàng", "meaning": "guarantee"},
    {"pinyin": "Bǎoyǔ", "meaning": "Bao Yu (name)"},
    {"pinyin": "bǎoyù", "meaning": "jade"}
]
print(pinyin_strict_sort(dicts, key="pinyin"))

# Reverse order
print(pinyin_strict_sort(words, reverse=True))  # ['Bǎoyǔ', 'bǎozhàng', 'bǎoyù']

Javascript

// Sort strings
const words = ["bǎozhàng", "Bǎoyǔ", "bǎoyù"];
console.log(pinyinStrictSort(words)); // ['bǎoyù', 'bǎozhàng', 'Bǎoyǔ']

// Sort objects
const dicts = [
    { pinyin: "bǎozhàng", meaning: "guarantee" },
    { pinyin: "Bǎoyǔ", meaning: "Bao Yu (name)" },
    { pinyin: "bǎoyù", meaning: "jade" }
];
console.log(pinyinStrictSort(dicts, "pinyin"));

// Reverse order
console.log(pinyinStrictSort(words, null, true)); // ['Bǎoyǔ', 'bǎozhàng', 'bǎoyù']

HTML

<script src="pinyinStrictSort.js"></script>
<script>
    const words = ["bǎozhàng", "Bǎoyǔ", "bǎoyù"];
    console.log(pinyinStrictSort(words)); // ['bǎoyù', 'bǎozhàng', 'Bǎoyǔ']
</script>

Sorting Philosophy

PinyinStrictSort implements strict, character-by-character alphabetical ordering. This means sorting is performed exactly the way most programming languages compare strings: the first differing character determines the order. No syllable/morpheme segmentation is applied.

For example:

• chéngjiù < chénjiù

This result follows directly from strict alphabetical comparison.

chéngjiù
chénjiù
    ^

the comparison is g < j, therefore chéngjiù sorts before chénjiù.

Why this may look unusual

One might expect:

chénjiù
chéngjiù

because we look at the syllables, effectively treating chén and chéng as complete units, and in our minds perform the following segmentation:

chén + jiù
chéng + jiù

PinyinStrictSort deliberately does not perform syllable segmentation.

Example

words = ['chéngjiù', 'chénjiù', 'chéng', 'chén']
print(pinyin_strict_sort(words))

Output:

['chén', 'chéng', 'chéngjiù', 'chénjiù']

Comparison with other sort methods

Hand picked word list

PinyinStrictSort	DeFrancis	Apple Numbers	Apple Numbers
chén	chén	chen	chén
chéng	chéng	cheng	chéng
chéngjiù	chéngjiù	chengjiu	chéngjiù
chénjiù	chénjiù	chenjiu	chénjiù

Continuous entries

PinyinStrictSort	John DeFrancis et.al.	Apple Numbers
zhuānzhí	zhuānzhí	zhuǎnzhí
zhuānzhí bǎomǔ	zhuānzhǐ	zhuǎnzhì
zhuānzhí shūjì	zhuānzhì	zhuānzhí
zhuānzhǐ	zhuānzhì	zhuānzhì
zhuānzhì	zhuǎnzhí	zhuānzhì
zhuānzhì	zhuǎnzhì	zhuānzhǐ
zhuānzhìzhǔyì	zhuānzhí bǎomǔ	zhuānzhí bǎomǔ
zhuānzhì júnzhǔ	zhuānzhì júnzhǔ	zhuānzhì júnzhǔ
zhuānzhì qǐlai	zhuānzhì qǐlai	zhuānzhì qǐlai
zhuānzhì réngé	zhuānzhì réngé	zhuānzhì réngé
zhuānzhì xìnggé	zhuānzhí shūjì	zhuānzhí shūjì
zhuānzhì zhēngzhì	zhuānzhì xìnggé	zhuānzhì xìnggé
zhuānzhì zhèngfǔ	zhuānzhì zhèngfǔ	zhuānzhì zhèngfǔ
zhuānzhì zhèngtǐ	zhuānzhì zhèngtǐ	zhuānzhì zhèngtǐ
zhuǎnzhí	zhuānzhì zhēngzhì	zhuānzhì zhēngzhì
zhuǎnzhì	zhuānzhìzhǔyì	zhuānzhìzhǔyì

History

This was much more difficult than expected, and took much longer than expected. But in the end it looks simple. 🚀