oievsoniWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: oie is a noun, oni is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“oie” is a noun and “oni” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,656
“oie” frequency rank
#49,618
“oni” frequency rank
80274
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature oie oni
Definition ganso pronome pessoal do caso nominativo da terceira pessoa do plural de gênero masculino pessoal, eles

Letter map: oie vs oni

Shared letters muted; letters that set oie and oni apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. oie (VVV) and oni (VCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

3 ch
oie
3 ch
oni

Part-of-speech tell for oie / oni

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: oie is anoun and oniapronoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80274, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

oie is recorded at frequency rank #30,656, classified as anoun, pronounced /wa/. oni is at rank #49,618, 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 80274, this pair ranks #1,355 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of oie vs oni

Shared letters: io. Private to "oie": e. Private to "oni": n.

"oie" · 3 letters · shape VVV  ·  "oni" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "oie" for "oni" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "oie" is a noun and "oni" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "oie" or "oni" show up more?
"oie" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,656 in our Portuguese list, against #49,618 for "oni". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "oie" and "oni". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "oie" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "oni" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,355 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "oie" and "oni" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "oni vs ons". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,355 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