ma vs mah, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#3,420
“ma” frequency rank: #29,420
“mah” frequency rank: 32840
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ma	mah
Definition	contração do pronome pessoal do caso oblíquo me e a	usada para chamar ou deter alguém, ou para chamar sua atenção

Letter map: ma vs mah

Shared letters muted; letters that set ma and mah apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch

3 ch

mah

Part-of-speech tell for ma / mah

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ma is acontraction and mahanintj. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “ma” sits inside “mah”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32840, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ma is recorded at frequency rank #3,420, classified as acontraction, pronounced /mɐ/. mah is at rank #29,420, tagged as anintj.

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 32840, this pair ranks #34,842 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ma vs mah

Shared letters: am. Private to "ma": -. Private to "mah": h.

"ma" · 2 letters · shape CV · "mah" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ma" for "mah" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ma" is a contraction and "mah" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "ma" or "mah" show up more?

"ma" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,420 in our Portuguese list, against #29,420 for "mah". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "ma" vs "mah" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "ma" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "mah" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #34,842 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ma" and "mah" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs mah". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #34,842 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.