Chinese dictionaries are arranged according to the radicals of Chinese characters, inheriting the principle of sorting the components in accordance with Chinese characters components in Kangxi Dictionary. However, at the same time, the sorting method based on the structures of characters is also applied to because some Chinese characters are not proper to be arranged following the sorting principle of basing on meaning. For example, the upper part of the character 荆 originally covered the whole part of the character, functioning as an element indicating meaning. And the lower part indicates the sound of this character.
In addition, in some main Chinese dictionaries, the characters like 问、闻and闷were simplified from the original 口、耳and心 structure into 门structure. When you attend to Mandarin language courses in China to study, teachers would tell you that the popular Chinese dictionaries are sorted according to the order of the letters in Chinese Pinyin. In the radical index at the beginning of the dictionary, all kinds of components are listed to provide convenience to the learners to find the characters much easier.
In addition, some Chinese characters are sorted in more than two lists of the components indexes. For some examples, the character 和 is listed in both the lists of 禾element and 口element. In the same way, you can find the character 鸿 in both the lists of 氵and 鸟. There are many other characters of such type in the dictionary. In this way, the characters are easy to find according to the components.
Just as we mentioned just now, there are two kinds of sorting methods, the meaning based and the structure based. Some experts said that both two sorting methods have advantages and disadvantages. Of course, the single meaning based sorting way or structure based method can‘t be implemented totally. In recent decades, the reformation on components of Chinese characters has been focusing on these two aspects and the difference is just which side it clings to.
According to the opinions of some overseas students who go to Chinese school to study in China, there is no need t worry about which method should be used. Since both methods have their good aspects and negative results, they can be combined together so that learners will feel much easier. However, the students should also know that the application of both methods at the same time will increase the length of the dictionary.