nasvsnearWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: nas is a noun, near is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#22,447
“nas” frequency rank
#33,730
“near” frequency rank
56177
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature nas near
Definition Nase nahe

Letter map: nas vs near

Shared letters muted; letters that set nas and near apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. nas runs 3 letters (CVC) against near's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
nas
4 ch
near

Part-of-speech tell for nas / near

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: nas is anoun and nearanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56177, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

nas is recorded at frequency rank #22,447, classified as anoun, pronounced [nas]. near is at rank #33,730, tagged as anadj, 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 56177, this pair ranks #950,410 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of nas vs near

Shared letters: an. Private to "nas": s. Private to "near": er.

"nas" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "near" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • near ← enar · naer · nearr · nera · nnear

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "nas" for "near" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "nas" is a noun and "near" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "nas" or "near" show up more?
"nas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,447 in our German list, against #33,730 for "near". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "nas" and "near".

  • Full dictionary entry for "nas" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "near" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #950,410 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "nas" and "near" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "near 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 #950,410 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