La vs le, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“La” is an abbrev and “le” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#817
“La” frequency rank: #1,852
“le” frequency rank: 2669
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	La	le
Definition	Lanthan	der, die, das

Letter map: La vs le

Shared letters muted; letters that set La and le apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for La / le

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: La is anabbrev and leadeterminer. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “La” becomes e in “le”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2669, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

La is recorded at frequency rank #817, classified as anabbrev. le is at rank #1,852, tagged as adet, pronounced [lə].

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 2669, this pair ranks #2,001,839 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of La vs le

Shared letters: l. Private to "La": a. Private to "le": e.

"La" · 2 letters · shape CV · "le" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "La" for "le" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "La" is an abbrev and "le" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "La" or "le"?

"La" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #817 in our German list, against #1,852 for "le". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "La" vs "le" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "La" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "le" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #2,001,839 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"La" and "le" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lame vs le". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #2,001,839 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.