Excuse me? "¿qué?" (ke) literally means "what?". That is like saying "what?" is the English equivalent of "huh?".

The Spanish equivalent would be "¿Eh?", which is also interpreted as not having heard well, triggering the repetition.

Had to read the paper to find this addressed:

> Huh? exhibits linguistic conventions that speakers need to learn in order to use the form properly. A learner of Spanish has to know that repair is initiated with the mid front unrounded vowel “e↗”,