This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
people...we can't have lyrics to songs in articles...it's a copyright violation. --FuriousFreddy 01:26, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
so???? Richardkselby 16:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not certain Charlie Kosei is the composer of the Katamari Damacy song; I've seen him listed as vocalist while Asuka Sakai is noted as composer. --The Dane 00:43, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Hey, Didn't Ned Flanders sing this while all the people were waiting for Springfield to blow up?? Tvaughn05 01:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
The sheet music for "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" (larger image) shows that the song was and is published without accent marks in the title. Many images and sources found online (including this album cover and this book cover) support it. I've corrected this in the article, also verifying sources for re-recordings/covers/trivia/etc., including the Johnny Thunders album, the video game soundtrack Katamari Fortissimo Damacy, and the House television series episode (the wiki article about the House episode has the same problem).
Accent remarks have been repeatedly added to and removed from this article in the past (I'm sure I missed some):
Correcting the name of the article is a separate problem. The article can be renamed (see Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page) but it won't be easy to do it properly because more than sixty pages (more than ten of which are redirects) link to it: click "What links here" in the toolbox in the left margin of the article to see those. Some of the previous moves and merges (I probably missed some of these, too) from its history are:
For encyclopedic accuracy, the article name really should be consistent with the song title. Athænara ✉ 00:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
The full song title exists in two official forms, neither with accent marks: no é, no á. The title of the song as composed and written by Livingston & Evans is in much wider use than the alternate title under which it won the 1956 Academy Award for Best Song:
Searches for portions of the title (with and without specifying song) lead to the same conclusion:
"Que Sera, Sera" | ~ 931,000 | "Whatever Will Be, Will Be" | ~ 187,000 | |
"Que Sera, Sera" song | ~ 388,000 | "Whatever Will Be, Will Be" song | ~ 116,000 |
Perhaps the most obvious and useful article name is simply Que Sera, Sera.
As the article's What links here list is quite lengthy, I'm not taking that on just yet. If there are rational arguments supporting the premise that the article name should not match the song title, I'd like to see them. Athænara ✉ 03:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
This article doesn't look like a stub any more.
This song is also found on the very end of the first episode of Showtimes Dead Like Me. Angela —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.98.108.48 (talk • contribs) 01:36, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 10:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Mme Butterfly (Puccini's): "Que sera? que sera?" I imagine this is where Ms Day got her "generic Hollywood Romance language" from. PiCo (talk) 13:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The tune also sounds remarkably similar to the melodic line in Chabrier's Habanera (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqWPe6z4nuE)
Missing from one of these lists or the other is Julian Clary's rendition from the British game show Sticky Moments. This is currently viewable on YouTube ([1]) and presumably aired in 1989 or 1990. As in some of the listed covers (compare the Chipmunks), the lyrics are altered for comic effect. Presumably this counts as a "cover", since it is an end-to-end rendition, and was on a national broadcast. Monomoit (talk) 14:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
I corresponded briefly with Ray Evans in 1995 about precisely this topic: the origin and language of "Que Será Será". He was a cordial gentleman and answered frankly about his imperfect knowledge of Spanish and how the song was named. I guess this constitutes "original research", which, according to the policies of Wikipedia, is not appropriate for its articles. In other words, Wiki prefers to cite verifiable _published_ sources, rather than things like "personal communication".
Evans's letter was written in what I as a professor would call "B-minus" Spanish (he humbly suggested "D"). In quoting from it, I will give my English translation. The source was indeed the Italian slogan from "The Barefoot Contessa", as stated in the Wiki article. Evans says "My colleague, Mr. Livingston, was very impressed with the film and noted this phrase as a possible song title; only he [!] translated [it] into Spanish because this language seemed better for a hit song." When they were assigned to write a song for "The Man Who Knew Too Much", Hitchcock suggested it be a song with a title in a foreign language, and of a sort that a mother might sing to her child. "We immediately [thought of] the title 'Que Será Será' and wrote the song that won us an Oscar...."
With all due respect, there's no reason to talk about French, Portuguese, Catalan, or "generic Hollywood Romance" in relation to the song's origin.
I understand that in modern standard Italian the future of "essere" is "sarà", not "serà", and that the "relative pronoun with internal antecedent" would require a two-word expression such as "quel che" or "ciò che", not simply "che". But this doesn't stop "Che sera sera" from occurring in one or more archaic or dialectal forms of the language, as documented in Marlowe and the Duke of Bedford slogan -- so the form in the Contessa film is not purely fictional, but has some historical basis. Can an Italian expert tell us what epoch and/or geographical variety "Che serà serà" might belong to?
For what it's worth, Evans consistently puts an accent on "Será" but not on "Que". The sheet-music cover that I've seen on line has the title in ALL-CAPS. This can't be taken as a guide for use or omission of accents, since accents on uppercase letters are optional for many typesetters in Spanish.
It is correct to say that "Qué será será" is ungrammatical in Spanish, at least as an expression of "what will be will be". Native-speakers have told me they hear the line as the question "¿Qué será?" ("What will it be?" or "What's gonna happen?"), with the verb simply echoed to fit the music (compare "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb,...").Kotabatubara (talk) 23:17, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I wish to mention two things: first, that Holly Cole recorded a studio version of the song on her album Don't Smoke In Bed, which I own, but don't have with me right now; second, that I just listened to the Hannah Montana song "Que Sera" and it is not a cover of the Livingston and Evans song, nor of any portion of it. I'm not qualified to edit the article properly, so will go no further than this addition to the talk page. Best regards to all the bona fide editors out there.208.119.151.50 (talk) 20:19, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
This song appears in Katamari Damacy. Where should this be added? Other references to the song? 76.19.4.2 (talk) 18:50, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
I have restored the paragraph stating that L&E took an Italian saying and recast it as Spanish, and that no other language was involved. This is essential for resolving the confusion that has existed about the identity of the language. I originally wrote "No other language was involved" in order to save us the trouble of listing all the languages that were not involved. It would not be appropriate to go to other Wikipedia articles where there are expressions in Spanish or Italian and insert statements about their coincidence or lack of it with French, Portuguese, etc., and I think the same applies here. This article is not about linguistic curiosities of French. Related note: Before checking "This is a minor change", please click and read "what's this?" for Wikipedia's definition of "minor".Kotabatubara (talk) 17:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
"O que sera, sera..." is a Brazilian expression meaning what ever has to happen will happen, implying that we have no control of the future...
Occam Navel: Instead of assuming an that the sentence is grammatically incorrect Spanish based on a Italian proverb, Why not accept from a Brazilian that it is a expression used here, even song as part of a new years eve chord. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.91.0.73 (talk) 23:08, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Although listed as being sung by English football clubs and, in 1990, the Rep. of Ireland squad, it was sung much earlier by the fans of the Scotland national team, and eventually recorded, by the Scotland 1978 World Cup squad. Ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48hEElLJl_4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.93.204.190 (talk) 07:16, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
"Que será será" -- with or without an accent on "Que", and with or without a preceding "Lo" -- if any such expression occurs in spoken Spanish, it has thus far avoided being captured in writing. No such expression appears in the 100-million-word Corpus del Español (which includes texts dating from the 13th century through the 20th century, oral transcriptions, and fiction), nor in any of the thousands of books published in Spanish between 1500 and 2008 that were scanned for the Google Books Ngram Viewer. If Spanish-speakers quote this American song lyric in their speech, I would maintain that it's "foreigner talk", something like an English-speaker saying "Long time no see". Kotabatubara (talk) 00:39, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
The last paragraph in the lede says,
"The song received the 1956 Academy Award for Best Original Song with the alternative title 'Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)'. It was the third Oscar in this category for Livingston and Evans, who previously won in 1948 and 1950. The title sequence of the Hitchcock film gives the song title as Whatever Will Be."
Which Hitchcock film? 129.2.167.211 (talk) 07:54, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
I have done a thorough rewrite of the section "Language in title and lyrics", trying to take into account the concerns of those Portuguese-speaking and French-speaking readers (see above) who had an early intuition that the song's title was speaking to them in a form of their native languages, at the same time as I have tried to remain true to the verifiable facts that I know about the song and the saying.
I have done some research—no, let me restate that: I've done a lot of research on "Que sera sera" and its various forms through the several centuries of its history. Wikipedia's policies discourage the inclusion of original research in its articles, so the facts that I have supplied to this article are just the tip of the iceberg of what can be known about the saying. I will share my sources with anyone who asks; contact me on my Talk page. Kotabatubara (talk) 22:38, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
Read this:
http://mypage.siu.edu/lhartman/kss/quesera1.html
--77.46.88.60 (talk) 13:03, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
'Que sera, sera' without accents is also 'what will be, will be' in French. I am a native French Canadian and I always thought it was a French song. We were taught that 'que sera, sera' in the song was French. It makes more sense then misspelled spanish and/or italian. --Silver (contribs) 06:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
There is some perceived ambiguity about the title as to whether it's Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or even badly pronounced French. According to information hashed and rehashed on various discussion groups online, the allegedly Italian origin ("Che sera, sera" from the 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa) may be spurious and its alteration (allegedly to sound more Spanish) equally so. / *January 2006: Question and responses from Google Answers / *March 2006: Lengthy English usage group discussion / None of this has diminished the song's popularity. |
Although it has similar pronunciation and the same meaning in all four Romance languages, "che sera, sera" is not grammatically correct in any of them. The Italian would be "Che sarà, sarà" whereas in both Spanish and French it would be spelled "Que sera, sera". |
There is some doubt about the language of the song's title. According to information on various discussion groups online, the allegedly Italian origin ("Che sera, sera", the family motto of a character in the 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa) is spurious. "Che sera, sera" is grammatically incorrect in any modern Romance language. The Italian would be "Che sarà, sarà", whereas in Spanish it would be spelled "Qué será, será". |
"Que sera, sera" is not "perfectly good French", at least not modern French. As such it would be rendered "Ce qui sera, sera". 217.210.227.101 22:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I further simplified the language info: "incorrect both in Spanish and Italian" (who knows about "any Romance Language"). Kaicarver 22:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I find it reasonable that the title is somewhat simplified through the omission of both accents and the less important word preceeding que, but I am annoyed by the wowel pronunciation Doris Day used in que: It is like in Day. The French pronunciation might be too alien for the Hollywood film public, but the simple Spanish que wowel (like in heh) shouldn't be too difficult? Although the movie action is in a French colony, a Spanish cultural heritage is more likely for the US tourists. OlavN (talk) 17:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
In Spanish, the phrase "Whatever will be, will be" would be translated as "Lo que sea, será". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.52.220.46 (talk) 08:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
It is perfectly good Italian to omit pronouns unless the meaning becomes unclear—a holdover from Latin. The omitted accents aside, the phrase would be correct Italian as sung (but spelled Che sarà,sarà), with the stress on the last syllable, and 'che' pretty much as Miss Day sang it. I have seen the expression (with the proper spelling, of course) written in Italian, and used as proverbial.˜˜˜˜ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Former Academic (talk • contribs) 18:35, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
From all I read here, and counting on my knowledge of portuguese (native tongue), spanish (fluent), french and italian (intermediate knowledge), It strikes me as evident that Kaicaver is right on the spot: this is generic Hollywood romance language. Phonetically, I intuitively perceived it as portuguese spoken by a "gringo" when i first heard the song (I was a child and didn`t know any other languages back then). The fact that it doesn`t follow perfect grammar rules is not very relevant, as songs and poetry often do play with prepositions and stuff like that, at least in latin languages. Quoting Former Academic above, "It is perfectly good Italian to omit pronouns unless the meaning becomes unclear" - and i would add, portuguese, spanish, and french follow the same "spoken grammar" rule. The evidence presented here by native speakers make it clear that it sounds french to a french speaker, italian to a italian speaker, spanish to a spanish speaker, and portuguese to a portuguese speaker. The same applies to galicians, for sure. I don`t know about catalan, and in romenian i would guess it doesn`t sound like native tongue. The fact that it is written closer to spanish, portuguese and french is not a reason to rule out italian out of the generic language set here. The "wrong" part when comparing to portuguese, for example (the accent ' in será) indicates, i believe, the true anglo-saxon origin of the phrase, where the accent doesn`t exist. It is supposed to be something exotic but, still, it is made for anglo-saxon markets, and with an anglo-saxon mindset/grammar structure. So, I will change the text in the article to reflect this idea. Feel free to change it back. But please, if you do that, concede us the grace of your thoughts so the that discordance becomes public. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marco.natalino (talk • contribs) 19:46, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Reading the first post its wrong when you stated that its misspelled in Spanish and/or in Italian. when you look at the origin of how Spanish and Portuguese came to be they`re closely related to Italian and French in some way or form. So all 4 languages apply when you use a dictionary because they all mean the same thing.(April 1, 2014) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.97.163.24 (talk) 10:20, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
I did read your comments, but they do not address correctly the issue of what language it is. I don`t really follow your accusation of subjectivity. "It strikes me as evident" means it is evident to me, and I was simply recognizing that others have already expressed a different opinion on the subject. My argument was that the sentence is understood by native speakers of many languages, and therefore the determination of what language it is cannot be reduced to one linguistic source. If gringo spanish, on that case, is no different from gringo french, italian or portuguese, how is it possible to draw the distinction? The account of the lyricist is important to understand how he came to know the phrase, but the fact that he (subjectively) identified it with spanish does not change the fact that it is not spanish (or, rather, only spanish). 'The question is not what language the lyricist thought it was (that is settled), but what language it is. It is somehow ironic that you accuse others of subjectivity while proposing that what decides the matter is the subjective view of someone that does not possess enough knowledge to judge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marco.natalino (talk • contribs) 00:06, 6 May 2012 (UTC) No doubt, It is spanish. In french it would be pronounced as (Ke segá) the first e as a schwa. Easy for a english speaker but I only hear será with a perfect spasnish r. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.14.243.235 (talk) 22:05, 3 June 2015 (UTC)