weekvswerTell them apart

Quick tell: week is a noun, wer is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“week” is a noun and “wer” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,982
“week” frequency rank
#133
“wer” frequency rank
14115
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature week wer
Definition Woche fragt nach einer Person oder mehreren Personen

Where the eye mixes week and wer

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
week
3 ch
wer

Why the eye confuses week with wer

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: week is [wiːk] while wer is [veːɐ̯]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14115, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

week is recorded at frequency rank #13,982, classified as anoun, pronounced [wiːk]. wer is at rank #133, tagged as apron, pronounced [veːɐ̯].

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 14115, this pair ranks #1,953,452 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of week vs wer

Shared letters: ew. Private to "week": k. Private to "wer": r.

"week" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "wer" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • weekewek · weekk · wek · weke · wweek

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "week" and "wer" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "week" is a noun and "wer" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "week" or "wer" show up more?
"wer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #133 in our German list, against #13,982 for "week". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "week" and "wer" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "week" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,953,452 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "week" and "wer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "week vs went". 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 #1,953,452 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