A phonetic spell checker comprises a dictionary table (10) having a plurality of entries each including an orthography and an associated pronunciation, said pronunciation comprising one or more phonemes; and a weightings table (14) having a plurality of entries, each including a cluster comprising one or more letters, a cluster pronunciation comprising one or more phonemes and a weighting for said pronunciation of said cluster. A user interface receives a word to be checked, a clustering mechanism divides the word into a plurality of clusters, each cluster having one or more pronunciations, each pronunciation comprising one or more phonemes. Pronunciations of the word are ordered according to the associated weightings of the cluster pronunciations in the weighting table; and the dictionary is searched for an orthography whose associated pronunciation matches at least the most heavily weighted pronunciation.
Phonetic spell checker for listing most likely correct spellings from a phonetic spelling of a word