card vs carte, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“card” and “carte” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#11,840
“card” frequency rank: #35,688
“carte” frequency rank: 47528
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	card	carte
Definition	Karte, auch Card	Zettel, Karton

Where the eye mixes card and carte

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch

card

5 ch

carte

Why the eye confuses card with carte

A purely visual mix-up. card ([kɑːd]) and carte ([kaʁt]) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47528, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

card is recorded at frequency rank #11,840, classified as anoun, pronounced [kɑːd]. carte is at rank #35,688, tagged as anoun, pronounced [kaʁt].

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 47528, this pair ranks #1,281,130 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of card vs carte

Shared letters: acr. Private to "card": d. Private to "carte": et.

"card" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "carte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

card ← acrd · cadr · cardd · carrd · ccard · crad
carte ← acrte · caret · carrte · cartte · catre · ccarte · crate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "card" for "carte" ever safe?

No. They are said differently ([kɑːd] versus [kaʁt]) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.

Frequency check: "card" vs "carte" - which ranks higher?

"card" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,840 in our German list, against #35,688 for "carte". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

Full dictionary entry for "card" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "carte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,281,130 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"card" and "carte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "carr vs carte". Nearby pair
Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #1,281,130 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.