sivssingTell them apart

Quick tell: si is a pronoun, sing is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“si” is a pronoun and “sing” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#482
“si” frequency rank
#20,435
“sing” frequency rank
20917
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature si sing
Definition refere-se à terceira pessoa, indica reflexividade e é usado após preposição (a, de, em, contra, sobre, por, etc., exceto com) cantar

Letter map: si vs sing

Shared letters muted; letters that set si and sing apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
si
4 ch
sing

Part-of-speech tell for si / sing

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: si is apronoun and singaverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “si” sits inside “sing”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 20917, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

si is recorded at frequency rank #482, classified as apron, pronounced /ˈsi/. sing is at rank #20,435, tagged as averb.

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 20917, this pair ranks #49,485 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of si vs sing

Shared letters: is. Private to "si": -. Private to "sing": gn.

"si" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "sing" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • singisng · sign · singg · sinng · snig · ssing

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "si" and "sing" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "si" is a pronoun and "sing" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "si" or "sing"?
"si" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #482 in our Portuguese list, against #20,435 for "sing". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "si" vs "sing" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "si" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #49,485 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "si" and "sing" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sing vs sire". 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 #49,485 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