há vs his, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“há” is a verb and “his” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#88
“há” frequency rank: #8,209
“his” frequency rank: 8297
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	há	his
Definition	terceira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo haver	pronome do caso possessivo da terceira pessoa masculina do singular, dele.

Letter map: há vs his

Shared letters muted; letters that set há and his apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

há

3 ch

his

Role in the sentence - há and his

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: há is averb and hisapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8297, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

há is recorded at frequency rank #88, classified as averb. his is at rank #8,209, tagged as apron.

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 8297, this pair ranks #65,521 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of há vs his

Shared letters: h. Private to "há": á. Private to "his": is.

"há" · 2 letters · shape CV · "his" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "há" for "his" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "há" is a verb and "his" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "há" or "his"?

"há" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #88 in our Portuguese list, against #8,209 for "his". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "há" vs "his" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "há" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "his" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #65,521 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"há" and "his" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "his vs hui". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #65,521 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.