ich vs ir, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#32,637
“ich” frequency rank: #162
“ir” frequency rank: 32799
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ich	ir
Definition	eu, pronome pessoal do caso nominativo da primeira pessoa do singular:	mover-se de um lugar para outro

Letter map: ich vs ir

Shared letters muted; letters that set ich and ir apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

ich

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for ich / ir

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ich is apronoun and iraverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32799, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ich is recorded at frequency rank #32,637, classified as apron, pronounced /ˈɪç/. ir is at rank #162, tagged as averb.

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 32799, this pair ranks #34,893 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ich vs ir

Shared letters: i. Private to "ich": ch. Private to "ir": r.

"ich" · 3 letters · shape VCC · "ir" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ich" for "ir" ever safe?

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

Which is more common, "ich" or "ir"?

"ir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #162 in our Portuguese list, against #32,637 for "ich". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "ich" vs "ir" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "ich" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #34,893 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ich" and "ir" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ich vs ino". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #34,893 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.