On Wed, Jun 25, 2003, Oron Peled wrote about "Re: kde":
> Is there an "soundex" algorithm for hebrew? If there is than we
> can precompute soundex values for all dictionary words and store
> them in some sorted data structure (say, a dbm file). Than we
> can present all words with same soundex.

Think for a moment why the "soundex" was invented in English. The problem
in english is sometimes you know a word, say "enough", you know how to say
it, but you forgot how to write it. You try "eenaf", "inuf", "eenoph", and
none of these has barely any letters in common with the correct word "enough",
they just sound the same. So in English trying to change a few letters to
come up with a correct word is rarely enough.

In Hebrew, this problem is not very serious. Except a few changes in letters
that Hspell already attempts (het/khaf, he/`ain/aleph, bet/vav, and a few
more), and the addition or deletion of imot kria (vav, yud, aleph) that Hspell
also tries, spelling in Hebrew is very consistent with the way a word sound.
This is why trying to add/delete immot qri'a and to exchange het/khaf, etc.,
is enough in Hebrew.

There are other kinds of errors that are not spelling mistakes, but rather
typos - an accidentally-missing or accidentally-added consonant, two transposed
letters, two seperate words run together, etc. Hspell does not currently
attempt to correct such errors, because I believed that such errors could
be easily corrected by the user without Hspell's help, and automatic correction
might list too many irrelevant suggestions. Maybe in the future I'll rethink
this.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Wednesday, Jun 25 2003, 25 Sivan 5763
[EMAIL PROTECTED]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Willpower: The ability to eat only one
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |salted peanut.

=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to