Patent ID: 7358866

Claim:
A method of disambiguating an input into a handheld electronic device, the handheld electronic device including an input apparatus, an output apparatus, and a memory having a plurality of objects stored therein, the memory comprising a first linguistic source and a second linguistic source, at least a portion of the objects of the plurality of objects being in the first linguistic source, at least a portion of the objects of the plurality of objects being in the second linguistic source, the plurality of objects including a plurality of language objects and a plurality of frequency objects, each of at least a portion of the language objects of the plurality of language objects being associated with an associated frequency object of the plurality of frequency objects, the input apparatus including a plurality of input members, each of at least a portion of the input members of the plurality of input members having a number of characters assigned thereto, the method comprising: detecting an ambiguous input including a number of input member actuations of a number of the input members of the plurality of input members, at least one of the input members of the number of input members having a plurality of characters assigned thereto; generating a number of prefix objects corresponding with the ambiguous input, each prefix object of at least a portion of the number of prefix objects including a number of the characters of the number of input members of the ambiguous input; for each prefix object of at least a portion of the number of prefix objects, seeking a corresponding language object of the plurality of language objects that corresponds with the prefix object; identifying in the first linguistic source a first language object corresponding with a prefix object of the at least a portion of the number of prefix objects; identifying in the second linguistic source a second language object corresponding with a second prefix object of the at least a portion of the number of prefix objects wherein the first and second prefix objects have different spellings; and outputting an output including at least one of the prefix object with which the first language object corresponded and the prefix object with which the second language object corresponded.