fotovsholaWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: foto is a noun, hola is a phrase, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“foto” is a noun and “hola” is a phrase - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#812
“foto” frequency rank
#48,229
“hola” frequency rank
49041
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foto hola
Definition Licht hallo

Letter map: foto vs hola

Shared letters muted; letters that set foto and hola apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. foto and hola follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
foto
4 ch
hola

Grammar separator: foto vs hola

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foto is anoun and holaaphrase. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49041, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foto is recorded at frequency rank #812, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. hola is at rank #48,229, tagged as aphrase, pronounced […].

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 49041, this pair ranks #1,226,257 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foto vs hola

Shared letters: o. Private to "foto": ft. Private to "hola": ahl.

"foto" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "hola" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fotoffoto · fotto · ftoo · ofto
  • holahhola · hloa · hoal · holla · ohla

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foto" for "hola" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foto" is a noun and "hola" a phrase, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "foto" or "hola" show up more?
"foto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #812 in our German list, against #48,229 for "hola". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "foto" vs "hola" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foto" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hola" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,226,257 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foto" and "hola" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hola 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 #1,226,257 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