Qué vs cuál: the one question, the chart, the quiz

Qué or cuál: the one question

Ask what kind of answer you expect. If it is one item out of a set of possible ones — a name, a number, a date, a city, one of these two shirts — the word is cuál: ¿cuál es tu número?, ¿cuál es la capital de Perú?, ¿cuál de los dos prefieres? If you want to know what something is — a definition, an explanation, the name of a thing you cannot place — or you are asking an open question with a verb, the word is qué: ¿qué es la sobremesa?, ¿qué es esto?, ¿qué haces el sábado?

Two shortcuts follow from that. Before a noun, use qué: ¿qué hora es?, ¿qué libro quieres?, ¿en qué piso vives? And in an exclamation, always qué: ¡qué calor!, ¡qué bien! The hard sentence is the one with ser in the middle — what is your…? — because English asks both kinds of question with what. Spanish does not: ¿qué es…? asks for a definition, and ¿cuál es…? asks you to pick out one answer. English what has a third job too — the thing that, as in what I want is a coffee — and Spanish gives that one to lo que, with no accent: lo que quiero es un café. Que vs lo que has its own quiz.

Every use, in one chart

Two rows in the chart below deserve a second look. The second is the one that catches English speakers: what is your address? asks for one address out of all the possible ones, so it is ¿cuál es tu dirección?, and ¿qué es tu dirección? sounds like a request for a definition. The last is the reassuring one: a question inside a longer sentence — no sé…, dime…, depende de… — keeps exactly the word the direct question would use, accent and all.

What is your…? The sentence English speakers get wrong

Every what is your…? question asks for one answer out of the possible ones — one name, one number, one date — so Spanish asks it with cuál: ¿cuál es tu número?, ¿cuál es tu fecha de nacimiento? The last two rows of the table below are the other half of the rule. What is a tapa? asks what kind of thing a tapa is — a definition — so qué: ¿qué es una tapa? (a small portion of food served with a drink). What is this? asks the same about the thing in your hand. Swap the words and the question changes: ¿cuál es la tapa? asks which of the tapas on the table is the one you mean. And for a name, the question most people actually ask is ¿cómo te llamas? — or, to someone you address as usted, ¿cómo se llama?

Before a noun: qué, and cuál in Latin America

Before a noun, the word that works everywhere is qué, whatever English would say: ¿qué hora es?, ¿qué día llegas?, ¿qué idiomas hablas?, ¿qué camiseta te gusta más? It covers both what time and which shirt, because the noun already says what kind of thing you are asking about.

In much of Latin America you will also hear cuál before a noun — ¿cuál camiseta te gusta?, ¿cuáles libros son tuyos? The academies' Diccionario panhispánico de dudas records it as far more frequent in the Americas than in Spain, where qué is the usual word. If you learn one, learn qué: it is right in every country. Watch the number, too: qué never changes, while cuál becomes cuáles for more than one — ¿cuáles son tus planes?, the same question as ¿qué planes tienes?

Qué on its own: exclamations and fixed phrases

English opens the phrases below with what or how, and Spanish with qué every time — never cuál, and never cómo before an adjective: how beautiful! is ¡qué bonito! One question English asks with how splits by region: how tall is she? is ¿qué tan alta es? in much of Latin America and ¿cómo de alta es? in Spain, and ¿cuánto mide? works everywhere.

Accents: qué and cuál, que and cual

In a question or an exclamation the words carry an accent — qué, cuál, cuáles — and they keep it inside a longer sentence: no sé qué quieres, dime cuál prefieres, depende de cuál elijas. Without the accent they are different words: que joins clauses or means that and which (el libro que leí, creo que sí), and cual turns up in el cual, la cual and lo cual, mostly after a preposition (la razón por la cual).

Why do English speakers mix them up?

Because English what does two jobs that Spanish keeps apart. What is a tapa? and what is your number? look the same in English, and only one of them asks what something is; the other asks you to pick one answer out of all the possible ones, the job Spanish gives cuál. Which does not help either: English uses it before nouns (which shirt?), where Spanish prefers qué. So the English speaker's slips run in opposite directions — ¿qué es tu número? from what, ¿cuál camiseta? from which — and the second is only half a slip, because much of Latin America says it too. The quiz on this page is built from the first kind and from the overcorrection that follows it: ¿cuál es la sobremesa?, when the question really is what it is.

There is no first-party error rate on this page yet: our mistake tagger counts ser vs estar, por vs para, the tenses and the object pronouns, not question words. When it does, the number will sit here, the way it does on the sibling pages. Until then the quiz is the measure.

What comes after qué and cuál?

Muy and mucho are the other small words English speakers translate too literally, and the saber vs conocer quiz is where these words go next — no sé qué hacer, ¿sabes cuál es? Asking a stranger their name or their number is a tú vs usted question too: ¿cuál es su número? The free Spanish level test places you on the A1–C2 scale in five minutes; A2 vs B1 Spanish says what changes after the first levels, and how to go from A2 to B1 is the plan.