alternate way of doing word split/phrase segmentation in python

Doing word split with recursion felt a bit complex to me , so I tried to do it in an easier way.

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• The Hard Way (recursion) --

def word_split(phrase,list_of_words, output = None):

    if output is None:    #Base Case / Initial call
        output = []


    for word in list_of_words:        


        if phrase.startswith(word):                       

            output.append(word)

            return word_split(phrase[len(word):],list_of_words,output)    # Recursive Call


    return output        # Result

gives

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• The Easy Way (indexing/for loop) -

def word_split_2(phrase, word_list):
    output = []

    for i in word_list:
        if i in phrase:
            output.append(i)

    return output

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this approach might be wrong , please correct me if it is