te vs tha, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#59
“te” frequency rank: #38,931
“tha” frequency rank: 38990
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	te	tha
Definition	a ti	presente do verbo bi (ser, estar); sou/estou, é/está, somos/estamos, são/estão

Where the eye mixes te and tha

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

2 ch

3 ch

tha

Visual trap between te and tha

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: te is /tɨ/ while tha is /ha/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (pronoun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38990, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

te is recorded at frequency rank #59, classified as apron, pronounced /tɨ/. tha is at rank #38,931, tagged as averb, pronounced /ha/.

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 38990, this pair ranks #27,374 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of te vs tha

Shared letters: t. Private to "te": e. Private to "tha": ah.

"te" · 2 letters · shape CV · "tha" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "te" and "tha" be used interchangeably?

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

Frequency check: "te" vs "tha" - which ranks higher?

"te" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #59 in our Portuguese list, against #38,931 for "tha". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "te" and "tha" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

Full dictionary entry for "te" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "tha" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #27,374 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"te" and "tha" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tha vs tosa". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #27,374 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.