ahvsalWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: ah is a intj, al is a contraction, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ah” is an intj and “al” is a contraction - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#640
“ah” frequency rank
#1,002
“al” frequency rank
1642
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ah al
Definition exprime admiração ao (contração da preposição a (Espanhol) e do artigo el (Espanhol)).

Letter map: ah vs al

Shared letters muted; letters that set ah and al apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch
ah
2 ch
al

Part-of-speech tell for ah / al

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ah is anintj and alacontraction. On the page they differ by a single letter - h in “ah” becomes l in “al”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1642, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ah is recorded at frequency rank #640, classified as anintj. al is at rank #1,002, tagged as acontraction, pronounced /al/.

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 1642, this pair ranks #73,888 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ah vs al

Shared letters: a. Private to "ah": h. Private to "al": l.

"ah" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "al" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ah" and "al" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ah" is an intj and "al" a contraction, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "ah" vs "al" - which ranks higher?
"ah" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #640 in our Portuguese list, against #1,002 for "al". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "ah" vs "al" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ah" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "al" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #73,888 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ah" and "al" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acs vs al". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #73,888 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list