la vs ls, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“la” is a pronoun and “ls” is an article - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#163
“la” frequency rank: #27,923
“ls” frequency rank: 28086
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	la	ls
Definition	mesmo que a, utilizado em ênclise com verbos que terminam em -z, -r ou -s	os, artigo definido masculino plural:

Letter map: la vs ls

Shared letters muted; letters that set la and ls apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for la / ls

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: la is apronoun and lsanarticle. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “la” becomes s in “ls”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28086, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

la is recorded at frequency rank #163, classified as apron. ls is at rank #27,923, tagged as anarticle.

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 28086, this pair ranks #40,785 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of la vs ls

Shared letters: l. Private to "la": a. Private to "ls": s.

"la" · 2 letters · shape CV · "ls" · 2 letters · shape CC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "la" and "ls" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "la" is a pronoun and "ls" an article, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "la" or "ls" show up more?

"la" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #163 in our Portuguese list, against #27,923 for "ls". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "la" and "ls".

Full dictionary entry for "la" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ls" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #40,785 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"la" and "ls" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lise vs ls". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #40,785 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.