ya
[jâ]
The verdict
“ya” sits in 14 confusable pairs (corpus #19,781) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #19,781
- frequency rank, German
- 67
- “Y” headwords
- 14
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 2, 2026) - ältere Schwester
Corpus desk
Index DE-ya · ya · German
ya · rank #19,781 · 0 variants · 14 confusables
- FREQ-MID #19,781
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 14 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 67
- PHOTO-FINISH Zahnbürste
Nearest frequency peer: Zahnbürste (+1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbourhood for “ya”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- Währungen
Währungen
80,224 corpus weight
- wäscht
wäscht
80,223 corpus weight
- wöchentliche
wöchentliche
80,222 corpus weight
- ya
ya
80,220 corpus weight
- Zahnbürste
Zahnbürste
80,219 corpus weight
- Zeller
Zeller
80,217 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “ya” sits against the nearest ranked German headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | ya |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [jâ] |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #19,781 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 14 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ya” sits in German frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ya is neighbouring look-alikes ("Yi", "you", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced [jâ]. Frequency #19,781 among 67 “Y” headwords. Gloss: "ältere Schwester".
No misspelling variants are generated for ya in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. It also participates in 14 confusable-pair relationships, "Yi", "you", "yes", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct German form is ya, spelled Y-A.
Definition
- 1ältere Schwester
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 2, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What to do next
You've looked up "ya". Here's where to go from here.
- "ya" maps to 14 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "Yi". View pair
- Usage frequency rank #19,781 among German headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more German words in the "Y" letter cohort. Y–Z browse
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
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.