mahvsmanTell them apart

Quick tell: mah is a intj, man is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#29,420
“mah” frequency rank
#2,736
“man” frequency rank
32156
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mah man
Definition usada para chamar ou deter alguém, ou para chamar sua atenção se (atua como partícula de indeterminação do sujeito):

Letter map: mah vs man

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

3 ch
mah
3 ch
man

Part-of-speech tell for mah / man

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mah is anintj and manapronoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - h in “mah” becomes n in “man”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32156, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mah is recorded at frequency rank #29,420, classified as anintj. man is at rank #2,736, 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 32156, this pair ranks #35,738 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mah vs man

Shared letters: am. Private to "mah": h. Private to "man": n.

"mah" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "man" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "mah" and "man" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mah" is an intj and "man" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mah" or "man"?
"man" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,736 in our Portuguese list, against #29,420 for "mah". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mah" and "man".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mah" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "man" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #35,738 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mah" and "man" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs mah". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #35,738 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