- Werdz - a phonetic spell checker
Werdz is a phonetic spell checker that uses the sounds of clusters
of letters to determine how a word should be correctly spelled. It correctly
spells words like sossidge, lettis and menny utha werdz.
How it works
A word is split into clusters of letters.
The clusters into which a word is split is determined from a table of letters
and sounds that correspond to the letters. The table contains
the frequencies of each sounds to letters correspondence. For example, the
cluster 'a' can be spoken as 'e' in 'many', a in 'another' or 'o'
as in 'want'.
Having split the word into clusters, a pronunciation for the word is generated
using the most likely correspondence of sounds to letters. This pronunciation
is checked for existence in a table of pronunciations and spellings.
The correct spelling for the word is extracted from the pronunciation table.
The next most likely pronunciation is generated and a further search for a
correct spelling is performed. The search for correct spellings may
be repeated until all possible pronunciations have been checked or limited
to a specified number of pronunciations.
Here is a sample of Werdz spelz oaquaigh
Where to get Werdz from
You can download Werdz (or a plugin for it) from here or you can try the web-based version
of it at http://www.GandJLawrence.co.uk/Werdz
As well as checking the spelling of a word the application also contains a
rhyming dictionary, an anagram solver and a word search function.
Further information
The patent for Werdz is here.
The readme file is here.
The FAQ file is here.
I wrote an article an article entitled 'All my own
werdz' that appeared in 'Developments' (IBM Hursley's in-house newspaper)
on April 30th, 1999 .
And for those who'd like to see what others have observed about English spellings.