How to pronounce quinoa

Short answer: say KEEN-wah (/ˈkiːnwɑː/): two syllables, a plain K and the stress on the first syllable. It's the first pronunciation in Merriam-Webster, Oxford Learner's Dictionaries (British and American), Cambridge (UK), Dictionary.com and Collins, and the only one in American Heritage. Merriam-Webster, Oxford Learner's and Dictionary.com also list kee-NOH-uh (/kiˈnoʊə/) second, and the British Longman dictionary puts it first. In Peru and Bolivia, where Spanish speakers use the form quinua, the word is said KEEN-wah.

Listen

Is it KEEN-wah or kee-NOH-uh?

Both are in dictionaries, but not equally:

So kee-NOH-uh isn't a mistake. It's close to the Spanish reading of quinoa, and in Britain it's well supported: Cambridge, Oxford Learner's, Collins and Longman all give a three-syllable British version. The American Webster's New World dictionary splits them: kih-NOH-uh first for the plant, "usually" KEEN-wah for the seeds.

The version to avoid starts with "kw", as in queen. Of these dictionaries, only the 2012 Collins edition lists it. In a 2026 OnePoll survey of 2,000 UK adults for Škoda UK, quinoa was fourth on the list of Britain's most mispronounced words, and both mistakes the survey named start with "kw": "kwin-wa" and "kwin-no-a". It's a brand survey, not a scientific one.

So which quinoa pronunciation should you use? Say KEEN-wah. It's first in Merriam-Webster, Oxford Learner's, Dictionary.com and Collins, and it's closest to the word as said in Peru and Bolivia. If you say kee-NOH-uh, especially in the UK, dictionaries back you up; just start with a plain K.

Why is quinoa pronounced KEEN-wah?

Quinoa comes from Quechua, the main language family of the Inca Empire, still spoken by millions in the Andes. The Quechua word is kinwa, also written kinua or kinuwa. Spanish took it in two shapes:

• quinua, said KEEN-wah, used in Peru, Bolivia and other Latin American countries;
• quinoa, said kee-NOH-ah, the main entry in the Spanish Royal Academy's dictionary.

English borrowed the word from Spanish (Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to 1625) and kept the spelling quinoa. But KEEN-wah, the pronunciation Merriam-Webster and Oxford list first, matches quinua. That's the trap: the spelling has an o that KEEN-wah doesn't pronounce.

The second trap is qu. In Spanish, qu is just a K sound, as in queso and tequila. In English words like queen, qu is "kw", so readers add a W. Modern Quechua spelling, adopted in Peru in 1975, writes it with a plain K and W: kinwa.

How to say quinoa step by step

1. Start with "keen". A plain K and a long "ee": the first syllable sounds just like keen (/kiːn/). No W after the K.
2. Add "wah". Round your lips for a quick W, then open them for the "ah" in father. There's no "oh": the letters noa become "nwah".
3. Stress the first syllable: KEEN-wah, two beats.

The slip to fix first is the "kw" in "kwin-OH-uh" or "KWIN-wah".

By first language:

• Spanish: if you say quinua, you already have it. If you say quinoa in three syllables, glide from the N straight into a W.
• French, German and Italian: these languages say quinoa in three syllables, with no W (French /ki.nɔ.a/, German /kiˈnoːa/, Italian /kiˈnɔ.a/). In English, merge the last two into "nwah".

Practice in a sentence

• Can I get the quinoa bowl with roasted vegetables?
• Is it KEEN-wah or kee-NOH-uh? Merriam-Webster lists KEEN-wah first.
• Quinoa, llama and puma all came into English from Quechua, through Spanish.

Then try other words from Spanish. American pronunciations, from the Cambridge Dictionary:

For more borrowed food words, see how to pronounce açaí, lychee and pho. Quinoa is also on our list of 60 hard words to pronounce.

What is quinoa?

Quinoa is the small seed of Chenopodium quinoa, a plant from the Andes. It's cooked like a grain, but botanically it's a pseudocereal, related to spinach and amaranth. People in the Lake Titicaca basin of Peru and Bolivia have eaten it for 3,000 to 4,000 years, and the two countries still grow the most. It's gluten-free and high in protein, and in 1993 NASA studied it as a possible crop for long space missions. The UN named 2013 the International Year of Quinoa, and between 2006 and 2013 its price tripled as the US and Europe discovered it, according to NPR.

Sources

• Merriam-Webster — quinoa
• Cambridge Dictionary — quinoa; Oxford Learner's Dictionaries — quinoa
• Dictionary.com — quinoa, with the British entry from the Collins English Dictionary (2012); Collins — quinoa, with Webster's New World
• American Heritage Dictionary — quinoa; Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English — quinoa
• Real Academia Española — quinoa and quinua (in Spanish); Wiktionary — quinoa, quinua, kinwa and German Quinoa
• Wikipedia — Quinoa and Quechuan languages
• Škoda UK — Britain's most mispronounced words, August 2026
• United Nations — Resolution 66/221, International Year of Quinoa, 2013; NPR — Your quinoa habit really did help Peru's poor, March 2016; NASA — Quinoa: an emerging new crop with potential for CELSS, 1993