OpenOffice and Aspell do use the "Double Metaphone" algorithm in some
form, a descendant of Soundex. The algorithm has been applied to
other languages and scripts successfully. The role of the algorithm
is to find alternative "suggestion" words to replace the unknown word.

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Nicholas Bodley" <nbodley@...> wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 21:02:47 -0400, suzmccarth <suzmccarth@...>
> wrote much else, including:
>
> > Personally, I am waiting for a better spell-checker - one that
will
> > accept 'wut' for 'what'
>
> There are "sounds like" algorithms, but whether they are included
in
> spelling checkers, I don't know; perhaps they are.
> Soundex is the (trade?) name of an algorithm, or something like it.
>
> =::=
>
> Sorry; have fallen behind in reading Qalam, again; only ~1,500
unread
> messages (all e-mail) this past month...
>
> --
> Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass. (Not "MA")
> The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
> Hope for these times:
> "The Impossible Will Take a Little While:...", the
> book by Paul Rogat Loeb