halbvsholaTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#1,849
“halb” frequency rank
#48,229
“hola” frequency rank
50078
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature halb hola
Definition geteilt durch zwei; die Hälfte von etwas seiend; zu 50 Prozent hallo

Letter map: halb vs hola

Shared letters muted; letters that set halb and hola apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
halb
4 ch
hola

Role in the sentence - halb and hola

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: halb is anadjective and holaaphrase. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50078, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

halb is recorded at frequency rank #1,849, classified as anadj, pronounced [halp]. 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 50078, this pair ranks #1,187,474 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of halb vs hola

Shared letters: ahl. Private to "halb": b. Private to "hola": o.

"halb" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "hola" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • halbahlb · habl · halbb · hallb · hhalb · hlab
  • holahhola · hloa · hoal · holla · ohla

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "halb" and "hola" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "halb" is an adjective and "hola" a phrase, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "halb" or "hola" show up more?
"halb" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,849 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

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "halb" and "hola".

  • Full dictionary entry for "halb" 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 #1,187,474 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "halb" 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 #1,187,474 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