Collage: left side is a person cooking. Right side is a cake with frosting

kocha and kucha

Cooking and cake—who doesn’t like both?

But those words are easy to mix up; not just because they are spelled similarly, and are food-related, but they also sound similar.

kocha = to cook

Kocha is a verb meaning to cook. That means the ending changes depending on the pronoun that does the cooking.

Pronunciation tip: kocha has a short o sound. The ending is said the same as the endings of the words: vocha, gnocha, fashprocha; and voch, doch, loch when conjugated to ich.

da kucha = cake

Da kucha is a noun. That means it will never change endings.

Pronunciation tip: kucha is said with a short u sound, and as in the endings of the words: sucha, psuchaflucha.