Design and Implementation of Shahmukhi Spell Checker

Spellchecker is a software tool that identifies and corrects any spelling mistakes in a text document. Designing a spell checker for Punjabi language is a challenging task. Punjabi language can be written in two scripts, Gurmukhi script (a Left to Right script based on Devanagari) and Perso-Arabic Script (a Right to Left script) which is also referred as Shahmukhi. Gurmukhi script follow ‘one sound - one symbol’ principle where as Shahmukhi follows ‘one sound - multiple symbol’ principle. Thus making Shahmukhi text even more challenging which complicates the design of spell checker for Shahmukhi text. The text written in Shahmukhi normally does not have short vowels and diacritic marks. So missing some of diacritic marks should not be considered as a mistake. But for Holy books like Quran, missing diacritic marks are considered as a mistake. So spell checker is designed in such a way that it can spell check with and without diacritic marks compulsion, which depends on user’s selection to spell check. In addition to this, Shahmukhi text has complex grammatical rules and phonetic properties. Thus it needs different algorithms and techniques for expected efficiency. This paper presents the complete design and implementation of a spell checker for Shahmukhi text.