Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "quién" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce quién in Spanish?

quién is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kjen/. It means “who.” kyen, one syllable — silent u, and the ie glides into a single beat.

kyen, one syllable — silent u, and the ie glides into a single beat.

quién /kjen/

One syllable, so the accent cannot be assigning stress within the word — it marks the interrogative, exactly as it does in "qué" and "cuál". The plural "quiénes" adds a syllable and keeps the accent, this time genuinely holding the beat on QUIÉ against what the default rule would do.

Listen: quién

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Sound it out

qu A hard k with no puff of air. The u makes no sound at all; it is there only to keep the c hard before an i or e.

ié The i glides straight into the e as a y sound. One beat, "yeh", and the accent sits on it.

n A fully released n at the upper teeth to close the word.

Hear it in a sentence

¿Quién habla?

Who's speaking?

Listen: ¿Quién habla?

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"¿Quién habla?" is what you say when answering the phone in Spanish, and it literally asks who is speaking. "Habla" has a silent h and a soft b between vowels, so the two words run together as kyen-AB-la. The rising question intonation carries the whole sentence.

Where English speakers slip

English spelling instincts produce two errors in a single syllable: a voiced u, giving "kwyen", and a split ie, giving "kee-EN". Both come from English spelling instincts. It is one compact beat: k plus a y glide plus "ehn". And note that "quién" never varies for gender but does for number — asking about several people takes "quiénes", which learners routinely forget.