title: Phonetic search for Indian languages
body: <p>I want to compare strings phonetically in my android app. But the special case here is, I want to compare Indian language words written in English. For example, I want to check if "Edhu" "Adhu" "Yethu" are phonetically equal, they all mean the same in Tamil language. But people who use English script to write Indian languages use different spellings to make the word. How do I compare words in this case?</p>
  
  <p>I tried out Levenshtein. But I am not sure how to convert the number it returns to the equality.</p>
  
  <p>I tried out Soundex, Soundex codes are not the same when the first letter of the word changes. But it is able to figure out the similar sounding parts. I don't understand how it works. </p>
  
  <pre><code> soundex.encode("Yethu")  (soundex.encode("Edhu"))  (soundex.encode("adhu")) 
   Y300                       E300                       A300
  </code></pre>