# Phonetic Reference

The following phonetics can be used from within matchers that support phonetics.

# cologne

The cologne phonetic uses the Cologne phonetic algorithm, which is similar to the Soundex phonetic algorithm, but specialized for the German language.

Example:

• Hendrik 06274
• Steven 8236
• Stefan 8236

# dynamicCologneLevenshtein

The dynamicCologneLevenshtein is an extension of the cologne phonetic, which introduces a length dependent Levenshtein distance.

Depending on your use case, the issue with the cologne phonetic might be that it considers short texts as equal even if a human would not consider them equal. E.g. Leon and Liam produce the same code (56), but do not sound similar. In fact their Levenshtein distance is 3, meaning three characters are wrong and only one is correct.

The dynamicCologneLevenshtein prevents any changes for when the shortest of the two texts has at maximum three characters, allows a distance of 1 for four to six letter words, 2 for seven to nine character words, and 3 for everything with at least ten characters.

# equal

The equal phonetic does not allow any phonetic changes at all.

# metaphone

The metaphone phonetic uses the Metaphone algorithm, which is similar to the Soundex phonetic algorithm, but with more accurate results.

Example:

• Hendrik NTRK
• Steven STFN
• Stefan STFN

# noDiacritOrSpecials

The noDiacritOrSpecials phonetic removes all diacritics, leaving only the basic letter. Also it replaces, where possible, other special letters, e.g. the German ß with a phonetic similar letter. It also detects and decodes unicodes, such as \u00f5 and \\u00f5.

Example:

• aāâäõŗłġß aaaaorlgss
• aāâä\\u00f5ŗłġß aaaaorlgss

# soundex

The soundex phonetic uses the Soundex algorithm, a relatively simple way of producing same outputs for similar sounding words.

Example:

• Hendrik H536
• Steven S315
• Stefan S315