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Which is found more often in common words, しょう or しょ?

I tend to think しょう is found more often and is usually placed in the end of
the word. On the contrary しょ seems to be placed at the start.

Are these assumptions correct?
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2013-10-27T09:14:41.243
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2020-05-14T10:17:59.843
2013-11-03T22:47:59.857
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words
しょう vs. しょ which is more often found in common words?
I don't know of any analysis which compares the frequency of しょ and しょう
sounds. You mention that しょ might be more likely at the start of a word and
しょう more likely at the end of a word. I don't think that's necessarily true.
For example, the suffixes 書 and 所 (and 署) are quite frequent and are at the
end of the word. Also, most kanji with reading しょう can also come at the
beginning of a word (e.g. [証書]{しょうしょ}).

The WWWJDIC kanji dictionary file contains

  * 52 kanji with reading しょ and 
  * 238 kanji with reading しょう

so one might guess that しょう is more frequent than しょ, both at the beginning
and at the end. (But of course the above-mentioned suffixes might tip the
balance for しょ being more likely at the end, but for this one would have to
look at the actual numbers, for example in a corpus.)
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2013-10-28T08:06:10.310
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Simply from etymology I would expect `しょう` to be **far** more frequent than
`しょ`. This is because `しょ` was always `しょ` historically, while a ridiculously
large amount of sounds _merged_ to `しょう`:

> せう せふ しゃう しゃふ しよ etc
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2013-10-28T12:35:35.527
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