English homophones
nani/nanny
"nani" is an intj; "nanny" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "nani" arrives as an intj, while "nanny" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "nan" then splits - "nani" (4 letters) vs "nanny" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across nani, nanny: an. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
nani
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory ain · private i
nanny
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCV
Inventory any · private y
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "nani" when you mean: what
- Write "nanny" when you mean: A child's nurse.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (nani, nanny). Here's where to go from here.
- "nanny" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #13,200 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 2 spellings ranks #133 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 2-spelling cluster: nye · nigh. Nearby cluster
- Grammar often disambiguates this cluster, match the meaning to the part of speech before picking a spelling. Pick by meaning
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.