katavskayaWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: kata is a noun, kaya is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“kata” is a noun and “kaya” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,625
“kata” frequency rank
#46,255
“kaya” frequency rank
94880
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature kata kaya
Definition Forme, technique dans les arts martiaux japonais. Riche.

Letter map: kata vs kaya

Shared letters muted; letters that set kata and kaya apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. kata (CVCV) and kaya (CVVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
kata
4 ch
kaya

Role in the sentence - kata and kaya

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: kata is anoun and kayaanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - t in “kata” becomes y in “kaya”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 94880, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

kata is recorded at frequency rank #48,625, classified as anoun, pronounced \ka.ta\. kaya is at rank #46,255, tagged as anadj.

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 94880, this pair ranks #1,368 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of kata vs kaya

Shared letters: ak. Private to "kata": t. Private to "kaya": y.

"kata" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "kaya" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • kata ← akta · kaat · katta · kkata · ktaa
  • kaya ← akya · kaay · kayya · kkaya · kyaa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "kata" for "kaya" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "kata" is a noun and "kaya" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "kata" or "kaya" show up more?
"kaya" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #46,255 in our French list, against #48,625 for "kata". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "kata" and "kaya". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "kata" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "kaya" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,368 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "kata" and "kaya" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "kata vs kite". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #1,368 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