fotovsshe'sTell them apart

Quick tell: foto is a noun, she's is an abbrev, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“foto” is a noun and “she's” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#812
“foto” frequency rank
#48,483
“she's” frequency rank
49295
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foto she's
Definition Licht she is: sie ist

Letter map: foto vs she's

Shared letters muted; letters that set foto and she's apart highlighted. No shared letter run. foto (CVCV) and she's (CCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
foto
5 ch
she's

Part-of-speech tell for foto / she's

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foto is anoun and she'sanabbrev. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49295, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foto is recorded at frequency rank #812, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. she's is at rank #48,483, tagged as anabbrev, 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 49295, this pair ranks #1,216,830 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foto vs she's

Shared letters: none. Private to "foto": fot. Private to "she's": ehs.

"foto" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "she's" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fotoffoto · fotto · ftoo · ofto

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foto" for "she's" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foto" is a noun and "she's" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "foto" or "she's" show up more?
"foto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #812 in our German list, against #48,483 for "she's". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "foto" vs "she's" 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 "she's" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,216,830 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foto" and "she's" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs she's". 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 #1,216,830 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