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Encode text phonetically with Metaphone

Source: R/preparer_word.R
as_metaphone.Rd

Names that sound alike are often spelled differently: "Smith" and "Smyth", "Meyer" and "Maier". Metaphone encodes text by how it sounds, so those variants share one key and match even though the letters differ. Best on single-word fields such as surnames or company names; it is tuned for English pronunciation (for German, see as_cologne()).

Usage

as_metaphone(text)

Arguments

text

A character string or vector to encode, or a token list-column (one character vector of tokens per row) when the encoder is placed after a token generator – each token is then encoded in place.

Value

A character vector of Metaphone keys, one per input element.

Details

Runs on either side of a token generator: ahead of one (on a text column), or after one (on a token column, encoding each token in place). Phonetic keys are deliberately coarse, so they trade precision for recall: pair them with a sharper field rather than matching on a phonetic key alone.

See also

Other phonetic encoders: as_cologne(), as_soundex()

Examples

as_metaphone("Smith")
#> [1] "SM0"
as_metaphone(c("Meyer", "Maier"))  # same key
#> [1] "MYR" "MR"