quer vs qui, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#129
“quer” frequency rank: #9,094
“qui” frequency rank: 9223
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	quer	qui
Definition	ou	que relativo; o qual, a qual, os quais, as quais

Letter map: quer vs qui

Shared letters muted; letters that set quer and qui apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch

quer

3 ch

qui

Grammar separator: quer vs qui

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: quer is aconjunction and quiapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9223, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

quer is recorded at frequency rank #129, classified as aconj. qui is at rank #9,094, tagged as apron, pronounced /Ki/.

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 9223, this pair ranks #64,286 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of quer vs qui

Shared letters: qu. Private to "quer": er. Private to "qui": i.

"quer" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "qui" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

quer ← qeur · qquer · querr · qure · uqer

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "quer" and "qui" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "quer" is a conjunction and "qui" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "quer" or "qui" show up more?

"quer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #129 in our Portuguese list, against #9,094 for "qui". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "quer" vs "qui" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "quer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "qui" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #64,286 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"quer" and "qui" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "qui vs quit". Nearby pair
Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #64,286 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.