Re: Soundex in other language

Rob,

You can find the algorithm at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex My suggestion would be to experiment with it yourself, maybe first in English to confirm your understanding, then in Dutch. My understanding is that English and Dutch share common roots so Soundex might do reasonably well as-is. I just saw a TV program on the origins of English and they explained Frisian was the closest existing relative to English.

Many people misunderstand what Soundex is. The only goal is to take the same words with variants of spelling (and misspelling) and rank them in closeness. Previously I worked for a mail-order company that would give a small amount of credit to nearly any new customer. Obviously some existing customers (who was probably behind on payments) would call up and try to pose as a new customer. Normally they would intentionally misspell their name, knowing that the postal employees would overlook small misspelling. Normally a small misspelling of a name will defeat a computer search. With Soundex function-based indexes, the system could usually find whether this was actually an existing customer.

Dennis

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