persanevspersonneWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“persane” and “personne” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#45,224
“persane” frequency rank
#149
“personne” frequency rank
45373
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature persane personne
Definition Femelle d’une race de chat, originaire d’Iran puis d’Angleterre, à poil long (angora), au nez aplati et à queue courte. Être humain considéré en tant qu’individu.

Where the eye mixes persane and personne

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. persane runs 7 letters (CVCCVCV) against personne's 8 (CVCCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
persane
8 ch
personne

Why the eye confuses persane with personne

A purely visual mix-up. persane (\pɛʁ.san\) and personne (\pɛʁ.sɔn\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45373, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

persane is recorded at frequency rank #45,224, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁ.san\. personne is at rank #149, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁ.sɔn\.

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 45373, this pair ranks #203,187 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of persane vs personne

Shared letters: enprs. Private to "persane": a. Private to "personne": o.

"persane" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "personne" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • persane ← eprsane · perasne · perrsane · persaen · persanne · persnae · perssane · pesrane
  • personne ← eprsonne · perosnne · perrsonne · persnone · persone · personen · perssonne · pesronne

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "persane" for "personne" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\pɛʁ.san\ versus \pɛʁ.sɔn\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "persane" vs "personne" - which ranks higher?
"personne" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #149 in our French list, against #45,224 for "persane". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "persane" and "personne" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "persane" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "personne" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #203,187 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "persane" and "personne" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "persane vs persans". 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 #203,187 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