masvsmyTell them apart

Quick tell: mas is a conjunction, my is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mas” is a conjunction and “my” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25
“mas” frequency rank
#1,440
“my” frequency rank
1465
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mas my
Definition conjunção adversativa, indica clara oposição entre ideias nós

Letter map: mas vs my

Shared letters muted; letters that set mas and my apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
mas
2 ch
my

Part-of-speech tell for mas / my

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mas is aconjunction and myapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1465, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mas is recorded at frequency rank #25, classified as aconj, pronounced /ˈmɐʃ/. my is at rank #1,440, 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 1465, this pair ranks #74,105 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of mas vs my

Shared letters: m. Private to "mas": as. Private to "my": y.

"mas" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "my" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mas" for "my" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mas" is a conjunction and "my" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mas" or "my"?
"mas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25 in our Portuguese list, against #1,440 for "my". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mas" and "my".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mas" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "my" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #74,105 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mas" and "my" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs my". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #74,105 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