Metaphone

<p>Metaphone is a <a href="/facts/Phonetic_algorithm/FVea6LH5">phonetic algorithm</a>, published by Lawrence Philips in 1990, for indexing words by their English pronunciation. It fundamentally improves on the <a href="/facts/Soundex/1EL8PN6b">Soundex</a> algorithm by using information about variations and inconsistencies in English spelling and pronunciation to produce a more accurate encoding, which does a better job of matching words and names which sound similar. As with Soundex, similar-sounding words should share the same keys. Metaphone is available as a built-in operator in a number of systems.
</p><p>Philips later produced a new version of the algorithm, which he named Double Metaphone. Contrary to the original algorithm whose application is limited to English only, this version takes into account spelling peculiarities of a number of other languages. In 2009 Philips released a third version, called Metaphone 3, which achieves an accuracy of approximately 99% for English words, non-English words familiar to Americans, and first names and family names commonly found in the United States, having been developed according to modern engineering standards against a test harness of prepared correct encodings.
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Metaphone open-in-new

Metaphone