Pronunciation of Que/Qué
Can anyone give any pronunciation tips to differentiate between "que" and "qué" ? It sounds the same to me.
2 Answers
Try to read correctly a sentence like this: "It is not a god, but THE god". That "the" is pronounced emphatically, which means that it is a stressed word, unlike the normal "the" in "I have seen the movie", which is an unstressed word. In English there is not only a difference in stress, but also in the length of the vowel and the position of the tongue, which becomes more open and back (i,e, more relaxed).
In Spanish, "que" and "qué" have the same sound, but the one with the tilde is stressed, so it sounds more like that "the" in capitals, while the one without the tilde sounds unstressed, like a normal "the". Phonetically, "que" follows the intonation curve of the sentence, adapting to the nearby words, while "qué" sharply raises the pitch and the intensity. But both represent exactly the same sound -"qué" is more "emphatic", if you wish.
Welcome to the forum!
coolhappyguy, the dictionary on this site has a pronunciation video for both these words. To me, there is a very subtle difference between the two.
que sounds like a single word
qué almost sounds like two sylables (ka-e)
Check it out.
