ten vs tu, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“ten” is a pronoun and “tu” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10,094
“ten” frequency rank: #243
“tu” frequency rank: 10337
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ten	tu
Definition	este, esta, esse, essa	expressa sonoridade produzido por telefone indicativo de que o aparelho telefonado foi posto no gancho ou que a linha caiu

Letter map: ten vs tu

Shared letters muted; letters that set ten and tu apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

ten

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for ten / tu

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ten is apronoun and tuanintj. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10337, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ten is recorded at frequency rank #10,094, classified as apron. tu is at rank #243, tagged as anintj, pronounced /ˈtu/.

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 10337, this pair ranks #62,804 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ten vs tu

Shared letters: t. Private to "ten": en. Private to "tu": u.

"ten" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "tu" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ten" and "tu" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ten" is a pronoun and "tu" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "ten" or "tu" show up more?

"tu" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #243 in our Portuguese list, against #10,094 for "ten". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "ten" vs "tu" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "ten" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "tu" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #62,804 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ten" and "tu" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ten vs tengo". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #62,804 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.