eenvsEhenTell them apart

Quick tell: een is a num, Ehen is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“een” is a num and “Ehen” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#33,012
“een” frequency rank
#13,583
“Ehen” frequency rank
46595
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature een Ehen
Definition eins; einer; ein einziger Nominativ Plural des Substantivs Ehe

Letter map: een vs Ehen

Shared letters muted; letters that set een and Ehen apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
een
4 ch
Ehen

Role in the sentence - een and Ehen

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: een is anum and Ehenanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46595, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

een is recorded at frequency rank #33,012, classified as anum, pronounced […]. Ehen is at rank #13,583, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈeːən].

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 46595, this pair ranks #1,313,726 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of een vs Ehen

Shared letters: en. Private to "een": -. Private to "Ehen": h.

"een" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "Ehen" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Eheneehn · ehenn · ehhen · ehne · heen

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "een" for "Ehen" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "een" is a num and "Ehen" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "een" vs "Ehen" - which ranks higher?
"Ehen" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,583 in our German list, against #33,012 for "een". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "een" and "Ehen". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "een" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Ehen" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,313,726 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "een" and "Ehen" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "een vs puzzles". 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 #1,313,726 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list