HvshumTell them apart

Quick tell: H is a character, hum is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“H” is a character and “hum” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#409
“H” frequency rank
#47,488
“hum” frequency rank
47897
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature H hum
Definition achter Buchstabe des lateinischen Alphabets männliches Personalpronomen der dritten Person Singular im Objektiv(≘ Dativ und Akkusativ): ihm, ihn

Letter map: H vs hum

Shared letters muted; letters that set H and hum apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

1 ch
H
3 ch
hum

Role in the sentence - H and hum

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: H is acharacter and humapronoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “H” sits inside “hum”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47897, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

H is recorded at frequency rank #409, classified as acharacter, pronounced [haː]. hum is at rank #47,488, tagged as apron, 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 47897, this pair ranks #1,268,052 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of H vs hum

Shared letters: h. Private to "H": -. Private to "hum": mu.

"H" · 1 letters · shape C  ·  "hum" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "H" and "hum" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "H" is a character and "hum" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "H" or "hum"?
"H" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #409 in our German list, against #47,488 for "hum". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "H" and "hum". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "H" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hum" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,268,052 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "H" and "hum" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hum vs puzzles". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,268,052 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