[stordoff]

> This could be fixed by adding a field to every street name for "a series of phonemes that provide a close approximation of local pronunciation"

Interestingly, this is essentially how a lot of Japanese forms (at least that I've seen) work. You have a name field, containing, say, 小島秀夫, then a field for the phonetic reading containing こじまひでお. Both are Kojima Hideo (typically Hideo Kojima in English), but the second is the phonetic (kana) form, whereas the first form of some names might be misread or have an unusual reading. You might also see it as furigana, where the phonetic/kana reading is written above the kanji form in small letters.

[lurgburg]

And in the case of Japanese, the extra field seems to be utterly essential, because the same characters in Kanji might be pronounced in radically different ways.

http://www.localizingjapan.com/blog/2011/02/13/sorting-in-ja...

  There are four Japanese women whose names you have to sort: Junko, Atsuko, Kiyoko, and Akiko.
  This does not seem difficult, until they each show you how they write their names in kanji:

      淳子 (Junko)
      淳子 (Atsuko)
      淳子 (Kiyoko)
      淳子 (Akiko)