sonvssoyaConfusable pair

Quick tell: son is a determiner, soya is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“son” is a determiner and “soya” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42
“son” frequency rank
#49,368
“soya” frequency rank
49410
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature son soya
Definition Troisième personne du sujet, objet masculin singulier. Sauce de soja.

Where the eye mixes son and soya

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

3 ch
son
4 ch
soya

Look-alike desk: son vs soya

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: son is \sɔ̃\ while soya is \sɔ.ja\. 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 noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49410, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

son is recorded at frequency rank #42, classified as adet, pronounced \sɔ̃\. soya is at rank #49,368, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sɔ.ja\.

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 49410, this pair ranks #170,913 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of son vs soya

Shared letters: os. Private to "son": n. Private to "soya": ay.

"son" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "soya" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • soyaosya · soay · soyya · ssoya · syoa

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "son" and "soya" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "son" is a determiner and "soya" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "son" or "soya"?
"son" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42 in our French list, against #49,368 for "soya". 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 "son" and "soya" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "son" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "soya" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #170,913 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "son" and "soya" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Soraya vs soya". 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 #170,913 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