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Metaphone¤

This transformer plugin implements the Metaphone phonetic algorithm for indexing words according to English.

Description¤

Metaphone is an algorithm which encodes words according to their English pronunciation. This is also what other phonetic algorithms such as Soundex do. Compared to Soundex, Metaphone’s algorithm contains a richer description of English spelling, leading to a better phonetic encoding of the input.

A description of the procedure can be found in the corresponding Wikipedia page.

Examples¤

We can get an idea of the output of the Metaphone algorithm using an online version of it such as the Metaphone Generator.

Illustrative examples:

  • knuth leads to the encoding n0.
  • school is encoded as skhl.
  • encyclopedia is encoded as ensklpt.
  • accuracy is encoded as akkrs.
  • eccenca is encoded as eksnk.

Related phonetic algorithms are the different variations or improvements of the Soundex algorithm, implemented by this (Metaphone) and the Metaphone algorithms. The corresponding linguistic transformer plugins are named accordingly.

Parameter¤

None

Advanced Parameter¤

None

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