1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing steps for building a symbol table for storing sort weights for a plurality of linguistic symbols used in a plurality of languages supported by a computer system, comprising: constructing the symbol table to contain a list of code points each uniquely identifying one of the symbols, and a sort weight for the symbol identified by said each code point; providing a plurality of compression tables, each compression table pertaining to one of the supported languages and having a compression type and containing compressions of symbols of that compression type; for each code point in the symbol table, sorting the compression tables to identify a highest compression type our compressions beginning with the symbol identified by said each code point; and storing in the symbol table a tag for each code point to indicate said highest compression type for said each code point.