halfvshamaWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: half is a verb, hama is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“half” is a verb and “hama” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#5,182
“half” frequency rank
#44,666
“hama” frequency rank
49848
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature half hama
Definition 1. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum Aktiv des Verbs helfen Eimer, Schüssel

Letter map: half vs hama

Shared letters muted; letters that set half and hama apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
half
4 ch
hama

Part-of-speech tell for half / hama

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: half is averb and hamaanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49848, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

half is recorded at frequency rank #5,182, classified as averb, pronounced [half]. hama is at rank #44,666, tagged as anoun.

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 49848, this pair ranks #1,196,077 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of half vs hama

Shared letters: ah. Private to "half": fl. Private to "hama": m.

"half" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "hama" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • halfahlf · hafl · halff · hallf · hhalf · hlaf
  • hamaahma · haam · hamma · hhama · hmaa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "half" for "hama" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "half" is a verb and "hama" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "half" or "hama" show up more?
"half" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,182 in our German list, against #44,666 for "hama". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "half" vs "hama" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "half" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hama" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,196,077 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "half" and "hama" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hama vs haze". 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 #1,196,077 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