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Question and Answer

Chris Saxon

Thanks for the question, Stefano.

Asked: February 01, 2016 - 4:23 pm UTC

Last updated: February 01, 2016 - 5:54 pm UTC

Version: 11i

Viewed 1000+ times

You Asked

Looong time ago I started playing with soundex() to compare names (first and last names of people).
Of course, here in Europe we have names in several languages, in our case they are in Italian, German and French, almost no English.
Needless to say that the results of soundex() are practically useless.
After so many years, I hoped one day to have the chance to enter the language as second parameter, but nothing.
Do you see a way to solve this issue? Thank you Tom.

and Chris said...

Soundex is specifically for English pronunciation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex

So unless someone extends the algorithm, the chances of there being a second parameter to support other languages is low.

There are other phonetic algorithms, but these aren't implemented in Oracle yet.

http://stevemorse.org/phonetics/bmpm2.htm

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