cantigavscontigoTell them apart

Quick tell: cantiga is a noun, contigo is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cantiga” is a noun and “contigo” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#38,167
“cantiga” frequency rank
#1,738
“contigo” frequency rank
39905
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cantiga contigo
Definition canto popular em tua companhia, equivalente a com ti

Where the eye mixes cantiga and contigo

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. cantiga and contigo follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
cantiga
7 ch
contigo

Why the eye confuses cantiga with contigo

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cantiga is /kɐ̃.ˈti.ɡɐ/ while contigo is /kõ.ˈt͡ʃi.ɡo̝/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39905, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cantiga is recorded at frequency rank #38,167, classified as anoun, pronounced /kɐ̃.ˈti.ɡɐ/. contigo is at rank #1,738, tagged as apron, pronounced /kõ.ˈt͡ʃi.ɡo̝/.

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 39905, this pair ranks #26,271 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cantiga vs contigo

Shared letters: cgint. Private to "cantiga": a. Private to "contigo": o.

"cantiga" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "contigo" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cantiga ← acntiga · canitga · canntiga · cantgia · cantiag · cantigga · canttiga · catniga
  • contigo ← ccontigo · cnotigo · conitgo · conntigo · contgio · contiggo · contiog · conttigo

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cantiga" and "contigo" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cantiga" is a noun and "contigo" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "cantiga" or "contigo" show up more?
"contigo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,738 in our Portuguese list, against #38,167 for "cantiga". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cantiga" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "contigo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #26,271 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cantiga" and "contigo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cantata vs cantiga". 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 #26,271 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