lang vs lung, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“lang” is an adjective and “lung” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#403
“lang” frequency rank: #36,488
“lung” frequency rank: 36891
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	lang	lung
Definition	große Ausmaße, große räumliche Ausmaße habend; über große Ausmaße, große Ausdehnung verfügend	die Lunge

Letter map: lang vs lung

Shared letters muted; letters that set lang and lung apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch

lang

4 ch

lung

Role in the sentence - lang and lung

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lang is anadjective and lunganoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “lang” becomes u in “lung”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36891, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lang is recorded at frequency rank #403, classified as anadj, pronounced [laŋ]. lung is at rank #36,488, tagged as anoun, 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 36891, this pair ranks #1,604,117 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of lang vs lung

Shared letters: gln. Private to "lang": a. Private to "lung": u.

"lang" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "lung" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

lang ← alng · lagn · langg · lanng · llang · lnag
lung ← llung · lnug · lugn · lungg · lunng · ulng

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "lang" and "lung" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lang" is an adjective and "lung" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "lang" or "lung" show up more?

"lang" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #403 in our German list, against #36,488 for "lung". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "lang" and "lung". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "lang" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "lung" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,604,117 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"lang" and "lung" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lung 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 #1,604,117 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.