to vs ty, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“to” is a particle and “ty” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#164
“to” frequency rank: #23,157
“ty” frequency rank: 23321
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	to	ty
Definition	marca o verbo seguinte como infinitivo	tu, você (pronome pessoal do caso nominativo da segunda pessoa do singular)

Letter map: to vs ty

Shared letters muted; letters that set to and ty apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

Grammar separator: to vs ty

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: to is aparticle and tyapronoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - o in “to” becomes y in “ty”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23321, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

to is recorded at frequency rank #164, classified as aparticle. ty is at rank #23,157, 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 23321, this pair ranks #46,521 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of to vs ty

Shared letters: t. Private to "to": o. Private to "ty": y.

"to" · 2 letters · shape CV · "ty" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "to" for "ty" ever safe?

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

Which is more common, "to" or "ty"?

"to" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #164 in our Portuguese list, against #23,157 for "ty". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "to" vs "ty" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "to" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ty" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #46,521 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"to" and "ty" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "til vs ty". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #46,521 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.