ni vs no, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“ni” and “no” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#8,234
“ni” frequency rank: #15
“no” frequency rank: 8249
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ni	no
Definition	nós, pronome da segunda pessoa do plural	forma enclítica do pronome o quando precedido de forma verbal terminada em som nasal

Letter map: ni vs no

Shared letters muted; letters that set ni and no apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

Corpus notes: ni and no

ni and no are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by a single letter - i in “ni” becomes o in “no”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8249, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ni is recorded at frequency rank #8,234, classified as apron. no is at rank #15, 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 8249, this pair ranks #65,598 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ni vs no

Shared letters: n. Private to "ni": i. Private to "no": o.

"ni" · 2 letters · shape CV · "no" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ni" and "no" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No. They differ by a single letter - i in “ni” becomes o in “no”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "ni" or "no" show up more?

"no" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15 in our Portuguese list, against #8,234 for "ni". 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 "ni" and "no".

Full dictionary entry for "ni" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "no" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #65,598 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ni" and "no" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nami vs ni". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #65,598 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.