Is one of the translations of "que" (no accent) the word "what"?
Four online and one massive offline dictionary I looked at all omit "what" as a translation for "que" (no accent). Google Translate is the single exception. Minus Google Translate, the only translations given for "que" in all the other references are: that, than, who, whom, which, if, and, whether.
Doing Rosetta Stone, I came across the following sentence (context: mother holding crying toddler):
¡Cuéntame que pasó! = Tell me what happened!
I don´t know how to read that without assuming "que" (no accent) means "what". Yet (except for Google Translate) every reference I have looked at says that "que" (no accent) does not mean "what".
So, either "Google Translate" is right and ALL the other references are wrong....or, there is an understood "it" in between "Cuéntame" and "que" (i.e. "Cúentame (lo) que pasó").....or, Rosetta Stone wrote the sentence wrong and should have made "que" into "qué"......, or, ??????????
5 Answers
I am almost positive they left out the accent mark. It should be Cuentame. ¿Qué pasó?
If you treat this as one sentence there are two clauses, cuentame, and que pasó. Que paso is dependent on cuentame, and there is no antecedent in the independent clause for que pasó to refer to.
An antecedent is like the thing that is being modified, so in this case whatever "que pasó" refers to is the antecedent. Since it doesn't exist in the sentence, it must be lo que not que. This is just a rule. The exceptions to this are special sentences like que tengas un buen dia which omits the beginning of the sentence but acts as if the beginning were still there.
Que is used to form relative clauses, also known as adjectival clauses. So these clauses must modify a noun of some type (even if it is abstract and genderless). What this basically means is that the relative clause is just a fancy adjective. If the noun is not explicit, that is to say if it is assumed and not written, then you mus use lo que because that gives you something to modify.
Without the accent, "que" would mean "that" or "than" in that sentence, which would make no sense -- "Tell me that happened!"
It should be "lo que", as in "¡Cuéntame lo que pasó!" for "Tell me what (that which) happened!"
Did you check this one?
I know, it isn't a bilingual one, but it will shed some light if you care to read all of it. 
It was probably a typo, and should have had an accent. My understanding is that "qué" is used in a question or exclamation, while "que" is used in the indicative form. This is similar to the used of "comó" vs. "como", "quien" vs. "quién", etc.
