mentalesvsmontagesTell them apart

Quick tell: mentales is a adjective, montages is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#14,510
“mentales” frequency rank
#16,678
“montages” frequency rank
31188
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mentales montages
Definition Féminin pluriel de mental. Pluriel de montage.

Where the eye mixes mentales and montages

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. mentales and montages follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

8 ch
mentales
8 ch
montages

Why the eye confuses mentales with montages

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mentales is \mɑ̃.tal\ while montages is \mɔ̃.taʒ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31188, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mentales is recorded at frequency rank #14,510, classified as anadj, pronounced \mɑ̃.tal\. montages is at rank #16,678, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mɔ̃.taʒ\.

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 31188, this pair ranks #305,423 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mentales vs montages

Shared letters: aemnst. Private to "mentales": l. Private to "montages": go.

"mentales" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC  ·  "montages" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mentales ← emntales · menatles · menntales · mentaels · mentaless · mentalles · mentalse · mentlaes
  • montages ← mmontages · mnotages · monatges · monntages · montaegs · montagess · montagges · montagse

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "mentales" and "montages" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mentales" is an adjective and "montages" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "mentales" or "montages" show up more?
"mentales" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,510 in our French list, against #16,678 for "montages". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mentales" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "montages" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #305,423 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mentales" and "montages" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "montages vs montais". 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 #305,423 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