The Y is there just to emphasize the long A sound and is not actually pronounced. I did that for other readers who might not speak ANY related language. I'm no expert; but in my opinion, the Brazilian "que" is not as clipped as you would find it to be in Spanish. I suppose, however, that it might have been more accurate to spell it, "kAh" - except that while the mouth begins to form itself for the "h", it is never quite fully formed and not pronounced at all.

I would fully expect for my Portuguese teachers to be wretching and gagging if they were to see how I go about explaining what they taught me. But this is as good as I can do.