Abstract: The invention provides a method for retrieving similar sounding words from an electronic database. An input or query word is first converted to a string of corresponding phonemes. The string of phonemes is then used to generate a key, with the key made up of elements corresponding to the phonemes. In a preferred embodiment the key elements correspond to classes of phonemes. The electronic database comprises a plurality of words, each of which have a corresponding, phoneme-based key. Words in the database having a key identical to the key of the input word are retrieved and output. The use of phonemes in generating the search key results in the retrieval of similar sounding words. In another aspect, the invention provides a method of providing a similarity score for an output word or a list of output words compared to an input word. All of the output words are converted into phonemes and the score is based on a comparison of the phonemes in the input word with the phonemes in each output word.