ma
/mɐ/
The verdict
“ma” is a regularly-used Portuguese word, ranked #3,420 in Portuguese word frequency and used as a contraction.
- #3,420
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 2
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - contração do pronome pessoal do caso oblíquo me e a
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ma |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Contraction |
| IPA | /mɐ/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #3,420 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ma” sits in Portuguese frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Portuguese entry for ma is 2 letters long, classified as a contraction, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /mɐ/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,420 in overall Portuguese word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "contração do pronome pessoal do caso oblíquo me e a".
ma doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable Portuguese patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "me", "my", "mi", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct Portuguese form is ma, spelled M-A.
Definition
- 1contração do pronome pessoal do caso oblíquo me e a
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 Portuguese corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “ma”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Portuguese spelling is M-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /mɐ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “me” - see the side-by-side comparison. ma vs me
- Browse more Portuguese words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Portuguese words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.