- 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.