mahévsmanuWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: mahé is a postp, manu is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mahé” is a postp and “manu” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,035
“mahé” frequency rank
#10,190
“manu” frequency rank
54225
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mahé manu
Definition Dans, dedans. Pouvoir, autorité.

Letter map: mahé vs manu

Shared letters muted; letters that set mahé and manu apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. mahé and manu follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
mahé
4 ch
manu

Part-of-speech tell for mahé / manu

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mahé is apostp and manuanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54225, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mahé is recorded at frequency rank #44,035, classified as apostp, pronounced \ma.ˈhe\. manu is at rank #10,190, tagged as anoun.

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 54225, this pair ranks #135,412 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mahé vs manu

Shared letters: am. Private to "mahé": . Private to "manu": nu.

"mahé" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "manu" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • manuamnu · mannu · maun · mmanu · mnau

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "mahé" and "manu" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mahé" is a postp and "manu" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "mahé" vs "manu" - which ranks higher?
"manu" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,190 in our French list, against #44,035 for "mahé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mahé" and "manu".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mahé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "manu" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #135,412 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mahé" and "manu" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mahé 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 #135,412 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