mon vs my, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“mon” is a determiner and “my” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#66
“mon” frequency rank: #2,938
“my” frequency rank: 3004
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	mon	my
Definition	Marque la possession ou l’appartenance. Le possesseur est le locuteur, ce qu’il possède est au masculin singulier.	Pronom personnel objet de la première personne du singulier : me.

Where the eye mixes mon and my

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch

mon

2 ch

Why the eye confuses mon with my

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mon is \mɔ̃\ while my is \məi\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (determiner vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 3004, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mon is recorded at frequency rank #66, classified as adet, pronounced \mɔ̃\. my is at rank #2,938, tagged as apron, pronounced \məi\.

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 3004, this pair ranks #435,020 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of mon vs my

Shared letters: m. Private to "mon": no. Private to "my": y.

"mon" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "my" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mon" for "my" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mon" is a determiner and "my" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "mon" or "my"?

"mon" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #66 in our French list, against #2,938 for "my". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

Full dictionary entry for "mon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "my" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #435,020 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"mon" and "my" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "MWh vs my". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #435,020 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.