Phonetic algorithm

The phonetic search is a search method to search for similar sounding words and sounds in human languages. An attempt is made with the help of phonetics and phonology, a phonetic ( " sonic " ) to find representation of a word and search for it - "fit" two words then each other when they have the same phonetic representation.

To find a phonetic representation, the words are broken down into phonemes. Depending on how " out of focus " should be the search, while similar sounds are combined. In the simplest case, only the phonetic representation of the search term with the phonetic representations of the words to be searched are compared. So then "Maier" and " Mayr " is found, for example, when searching for " Meier ".

One can also allow one or more sounds to replace, add, or may be omitted from the search. These can be operated with the same procedures as for the correction of typos, for example, the Levenshtein distance. This then adjusts for example, "house" to " mouse ", " fresh" to " fish ", etc.

Phonetic search is for example used by search engines, online dictionaries or spell check programs.