sabiávssamaWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#38,475
“sabiá” frequency rank
#28,025
“sama” frequency rank
66500
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sabiá sama
Definition pássaro canoro do Brasil forma nominativo feminino singular do pronome sám

Letter map: sabiá vs sama

Shared letters muted; letters that set sabiá and sama apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. sabiá runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against sama's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
sabiá
4 ch
sama

Role in the sentence - sabiá and sama

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sabiá is anoun and samaapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66500, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sabiá is recorded at frequency rank #38,475, classified as anoun. sama is at rank #28,025, 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 66500, this pair ranks #4,966 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of sabiá vs sama

Shared letters: as. Private to "sabiá": biá. Private to "sama": m.

"sabiá" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "sama" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sama ← saam · samma · smaa · ssama

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sabiá" for "sama" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sabiá" is a noun and "sama" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "sabiá" or "sama" show up more?
"sama" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,025 in our Portuguese list, against #38,475 for "sabiá". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "sabiá" and "sama".

  • Full dictionary entry for "sabiá" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sama" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #4,966 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sabiá" and "sama" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sabiá vs sanita". 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 #4,966 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