City      Country  Continent
New York  States   Noth America
New York  Germany  Europe - considering there's one ;)
Paris     France   Europe

$querylev = "select City, Country, Continent FROM table
            WHERE LEVENSHTEIN(`City`,'New Yokr') < 3"

([new]+s+[york]+s+[stae]+)

$re = '/([new]+s+[york]+s+[stae]+)/mi';
$str = 'Anything we wish to have before followed by a New York Statse then anything we wish to have after. Anything we wish to have before followed by a New  Yokr  State then anything we wish to have after. Anything we wish to have before followed by a New Yokr Stats then anything we wish to have after. Anything we wish to have before followed by a New York Statse then anything we wish to have after. ';

preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);

// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);