Cuál & Qué

Question

I'm still having a bit of trouble with these and am hoping to get some things cleared up...

If you have the sentence "¿______ quieres tomar?" without anything preceding it, how do you know whether to use qué or cual? At first I thought qué, because there aren't any named possibilities. Now I'm not so sure, because I suppose you might need to infer that there are going to be a limited number of choices, and therefore it would be cuál.

Am I making any sense? I hope so! Thanks for sharing any wisdom

Answer 1

Think of cuál as "which" and qué as "what.

As you say Which if there is a list or limited number of options and what if there isn´t.

Answer 2

It makes sense, but when you aren't sure, I'd go with qué. Kinda like when you use él when in doubt, when in doubt use qué for that scenario. But if you are able to tell if the selection of items is limited you are correct, cuál seems to be the correct choice.