Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "que" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce que in Spanish?

que is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ke/. It means “that / which.” keh — the u is silent, there only to keep the c hard, and the e is the vowel of "bed".

keh — the u is silent, there only to keep the c hard, and the e is the vowel of "bed".

que /ke/

One unstressed syllable in this form — the conjunction meaning that or which slides by without a beat. Its accented twin "qué" means what and does take stress: the accent is not marking a different sound but flagging a question or exclamation word, and it comes with real emphasis in speech.

Listen: que

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Sound it out

qu A hard k sound with no puff of air. The u is a spelling device: before e or i, Spanish writes qu to get a k sound, because a bare c there would come out as an s. The u itself is never pronounced in this combination.

e A short "eh" as in "bed", kept clear despite being unstressed.

Hear it in a sentence

Dice que está ocupado.

He says he's busy.

Listen: Dice que está ocupado.

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"Dice que está ocupado" uses "que" to link two clauses, where English can drop the that entirely — Spanish cannot. Notice "está ocupado" runs the final á straight into the o of "ocupado" with no break, and "ocupado" itself is four beats with the stress on PA, the second-to-last syllable, exactly per the default rule.

Where English speakers slip

The instinct is to pronounce the u — "kweh" — because English does exactly that in "queen" and "quick". In Spanish, qu before e or i is silently a k; the u only speaks up in combinations like "cuatro" where it is written after a c. The other confusion is written rather than spoken: "que" and "qué" sound the same, but writing the wrong one turns "he says that" into "he says what".