mahvsmerahConfusable pair

Quick tell: mah is a determiner, merah is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mah” is a determiner and “merah” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#34,174
“mah” frequency rank
#23,609
“merah” frequency rank
57783
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mah merah
Definition Mon, ma. Rouge.

Letter map: mah vs merah

Shared letters muted; letters that set mah and merah apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. mah runs 3 letters (CVC) against merah's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
mah
5 ch
merah

Part-of-speech tell for mah / merah

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mah is adeterminer and merahanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57783, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mah is recorded at frequency rank #34,174, classified as adet, pronounced \mɑː\. merah is at rank #23,609, 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 57783, this pair ranks #112,990 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mah vs merah

Shared letters: ahm. Private to "mah": -. Private to "merah": er.

"mah" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "merah" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • merahemrah · mearh · merahh · merha · merrah · mmerah · mreah

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "mah" and "merah" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mah" is a determiner and "merah" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "mah" vs "merah" - which ranks higher?
"merah" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,609 in our French list, against #34,174 for "mah". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "mah" vs "merah" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mah" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "merah" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #112,990 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mah" and "merah" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mah vs MWh". 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 #112,990 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