sai
[ˈsai̯]
The verdict
“sai” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #47,708) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #47,708
- frequency rank, German
- 107,600
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - 2. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs sapere
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sai |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [ˈsai̯] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #47,708 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sai” sits in German frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for sai is neighbouring look-alikes ("so", "Sc", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced [ˈsai̯]. Frequency #47,708 among 107,600 “S” headwords. Gloss: "2. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs sapere".
sai doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "Sc", "SV", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is sai, spelled S-A-I.
Definition
- 12. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs sapere
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 German corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “sai”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is S-A-I - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ˈsai̯] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “so” - see the side-by-side comparison. sai vs so
- Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words
Words at a similar German frequency
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.