ya
[jâ]
The verdict
“ya” is a moderately-common German word, ranked #19,781 in German word frequency and used as a noun.
- #19,781
- frequency rank, German
- 2
- letters
- 14
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - ältere Schwester
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
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for ya is 2 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [jâ]. Corpus data places it at rank #19,781 in overall German word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “ya”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is Y-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [jâ] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Yi” - see the side-by-side comparison. ya vs Yi
- Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words
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.