nosvsnyWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: nos is a determiner, ny is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#147
“nos” frequency rank
#10,201
“ny” frequency rank
10348
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature nos ny
Definition Première personne du pluriel. Qui sont à nous. Plusieurs possesseurs et plusieurs objets. Nous.

Letter map: nos vs ny

Shared letters muted; letters that set nos and ny apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
nos
2 ch
ny

Part-of-speech tell for nos / ny

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: nos is adeterminer and nyapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10348, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

nos is recorded at frequency rank #147, classified as adet, pronounced \no\. ny is at rank #10,201, tagged as apron, pronounced \ˈ\.

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 10348, this pair ranks #413,322 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of nos vs ny

Shared letters: n. Private to "nos": os. Private to "ny": y.

"nos" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "ny" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "nos" and "ny" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "nos" is a determiner and "ny" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "nos" or "ny"?
"nos" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #147 in our French list, against #10,201 for "ny". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "nos" vs "ny" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "nos" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ny" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #413,322 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "nos" and "ny" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nop vs ny". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #413,322 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