sivssuaWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: si is a pronoun, sua is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#482
“si” frequency rank
#32
“sua” frequency rank
514
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature si sua
Definition refere-se à terceira pessoa, indica reflexividade e é usado após preposição (a, de, em, contra, sobre, por, etc., exceto com) que tem você como objeto

Letter map: si vs sua

Shared letters muted; letters that set si and sua apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch
si
3 ch
sua

Part-of-speech tell for si / sua

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: si is apronoun and suaanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 514, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

si is recorded at frequency rank #482, classified as apron, pronounced /ˈsi/. sua is at rank #32, tagged as anadj.

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 514, this pair ranks #75,153 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of si vs sua

Shared letters: s. Private to "si": i. Private to "sua": au.

"si" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "sua" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "si" and "sua" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "si" is a pronoun and "sua" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "si" vs "sua" - which ranks higher?
"sua" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32 in our Portuguese list, against #482 for "si". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "si" vs "sua" 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 "sua" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #75,153 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "si" and "sua" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "soap vs sua". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #75,153 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