ichvsIRDWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: ich is a pronoun, IRD is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ich” is a pronoun and “IRD” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,841
“ich” frequency rank
#48,611
“IRD” frequency rank
76452
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ich IRD
Definition Je (première personne du singulier nominatif). Établissement public à caractère scientifique et technologique (EPST) français, sous la tutelle des ministères chargés de la Recherche et de la Coopération, remplaçant l’Office de la recherche scientifique et technique outre-mer (ORSTOM).

Letter map: ich vs IRD

Shared letters muted; letters that set ich and IRD apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. ich and IRD follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

3 ch
ich
3 ch
IRD

Part-of-speech tell for ich / IRD

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ich is apronoun and IRDaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 76452, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ich is recorded at frequency rank #27,841, classified as apron, pronounced \iːt͡ʃ\. IRD is at rank #48,611, tagged as aname.

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 76452, this pair ranks #31,117 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ich vs IRD

Shared letters: i. Private to "ich": ch. Private to "IRD": dr.

"ich" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "IRD" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ich" for "IRD" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ich" is a pronoun and "IRD" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "ich" vs "IRD" - which ranks higher?
"ich" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,841 in our French list, against #48,611 for "IRD". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "ich" and "IRD". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ich" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "IRD" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #31,117 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ich" and "IRD" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "IRD vs isi". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #31,117 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list