ni vs num, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“ni” is a pronoun and “num” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,234
“ni” frequency rank: #234
“num” frequency rank: 8468
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ni	num
Definition	nós, pronome da segunda pessoa do plural	o mesmo que não

Letter map: ni vs num

Shared letters muted; letters that set ni and num apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

3 ch

num

Part-of-speech tell for ni / num

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ni is apronoun and numanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8468, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ni is recorded at frequency rank #8,234, classified as apron. num is at rank #234, tagged as anadv.

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 8468, this pair ranks #65,291 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ni vs num

Shared letters: n. Private to "ni": i. Private to "num": mu.

"ni" · 2 letters · shape CV · "num" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ni" and "num" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

Which is more common, "ni" or "num"?

"num" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #234 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.

Useful next steps

You've compared "ni" and "num". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "ni" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "num" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #65,291 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ni" and "num" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nami vs ni". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #65,291 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.