no vs ny, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“no” and “ny” are a confusable Spanish pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#9
“no” frequency rank: #11,275
“ny” frequency rank: 11284
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	no	ny
Definition	Adverbio de negación, respondiendo a una pregunta.	No.

Letter map: no vs ny

Shared letters muted; letters that set no and ny apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

Pair insight - no / ny

no and ny are indexed as a confusable Spanish pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by a single letter - o in “no” becomes y in “ny”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11284, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

no is recorded at frequency rank #9, classified as anadv, pronounced [ˈno]. ny is at rank #11,275, tagged as anadv.

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 11284, this pair ranks #295,657 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of no vs ny

Shared letters: n. Private to "no": o. Private to "ny": y.

"no" · 2 letters · shape CV · "ny" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "no" for "ny" ever safe?

No. They differ by a single letter - o in “no” becomes y in “ny”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.

In ordinary Spanish text, does "no" or "ny" show up more?

"no" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9 in our Spanish list, against #11,275 for "ny". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "no" and "ny". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "no" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ny" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #295,657 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"no" and "ny" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nox vs ny". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #295,657 of 323,831 scored Spanish pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.