Talk:Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)

Lyrics

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)

Charlie Kosei

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)

Here are the people who worked on it:

• Music by: Taku Agamatsu
• Arranged by: Taku Agamatsu
• Lyrics by: Natsuki Izaki, Taku Agamatsu
• Performed by: Charlie Kosei

--Sinnic 20:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Flanders

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)

Language

The article does not state what language the phrase "Que Será, Será" is in, this is a major oversight. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.109.112.236 (talk • contribs) 20:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

"Que será será" is Spanish. Google Answer on the subject. --Sharcho 18:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

It isn't, actually. Kaicarver (see below) is right: it's in "generic Hollywood romance language." It may have been intended to sound Spanish, but it's not, and the official titles as published have no é or á. –Æ. ✉ 22:29, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I simplified the song title section. There's no way the title could be French, even mispronounced. The French would be something like "ce qui sera, sera". Don't know about Portuguese. I'm also not sure whether the spelling in Spanish should be "Qué" or "Que". I'd favor "Que", a shortened "Lo que" or "El destino que" (see discussion), but my Spanish isn't good enough to say. I'd welcome an authoritative answer from a Spanish speaker, though clearly the song title is in "generic Hollywood Romance language" Kaicarver 10:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

For the pronoun "whatever," The New World Spanish-English and English-Spanish Dictionary has "cualquier cosa que, todo lo que, no importa que;" Cassell's Concise French-English English-French Dictionary has "quoi que;" Mondadori's Pocket Italian-English English-Italian Dictionary has "tutto cio che, qualunque, qualsiasi cosa, quel poco di." –Æ. ✉ 22:47, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

This isn't about the correct translation of "whatever". Even if spelled "Qué será, será" or "Que será, será" this is not correct Spanish, contrary to what the article says. In Spanish it would be "Lo que será, será" (if you don't want to use the more adequate subjunctive of future/present: lo que fuere/lo que sea). Omitting "lo" is not idiomatic. ¿Algún hispanohablante que me quiera contradecir? AFAIK Hitchcock didn't speak Spanish, so it makes sense.--87.162.54.135 18:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It's "what" meaning "that which"; hence "quello che" or "ciò che" in Italian.

The article linked to by the "not" at the bottom of the trivia suggests that the Spanish equivalent could be wrong, and that the first verb should be in the subjunctive, not the future. — Paul G 17:43, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The French translation here is wrong -- "ce qui sera sera" means "who will be, will be." "Ce que sera sera" would mean "what will be will be," so I think the title is probably closest to French. However, to actually say "Whatever happens will happen," you'd probably want to say "Ce que se passera se passera." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.112.136.11 (talk) 20:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, "ce qui" can refer to things, so "ce qui sera" can mean "what/whatever will be". "Ce qui" functions as a sentence subject, and because of this it's followed directly by a verb, as in "ce qui sera." "Ce que", however, functions as an object, so it is followed by a subject + verb. So "ce que sera" isn't possible because "ce que" needs a subject right after it. You might be confusing ce qui/ce que with qui/que. I do agree that "se passer" or "arriver" would be better than "être" in translating "what will be" to French.Savacek (talk) 19:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I would say that for the way that is written "que sera, sera" is either portuguese or spanish. But, for me, as a native portuguese speaker, sounds extremelly Brazilian or Portuguese, as the article "o" is quite hard to be heard when one sings.

French, Italian, Spanish...

'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)

Silver/AdriaDracis, I hope you don't mind, I've moved your post down a bit, rather than up there above old April and June posts, to try to preserve some sense of chronological order. Yours is a very interesting observation, particularly interesting to me because of material (later removed by another editor) which I had added in early November 2006:

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.

A few weeks later, in early December, another editor added these lines:

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".

About a week after that, yet another editor (edit summary: "simplified: the title could not be French") changed it again, removing some, adding some, leaving this:

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".

The google answers bit is less than half-baked (that's where the Portuguese notion came from), but the linguistics discussion dissects it thoroughly. The truth of the matter is exactly what Kaicarver said here on the talk page last month: the phrase "Que Sera, Sera" in this song is in "generic Hollywood Romance language" which resembles all these languages while actually being none of them. That's Hollywood.

Are any of you good at getting permission from publishers? One small image of the sheet music cover in the article, as clearly shown here, would be enormously helpful. Athænara ✉ 13:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. That children in Quebec are taught that "Que Sera, Sera" is French is intriguing—I wonder how far we, editing this song article, should go in pursuing the further linguistic migrations of the phrase. –Æ. ✉ 13:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not from Quebec, I'm from Ontario. There are many French communities outside of Quebec, and French is mandatory in our school system from grade 1-9, unless there are developmental problems. The city where I was born, most people spoke both languages, but it often ended up been a franco-anglo hash with some borrowed Algonquin and Gaelic words. Silver 08:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

"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 disagree, I think that makes even less sense then 'Que, sera sera'. The object is 'what' not 'who'. Silver 08:09, 27 February 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)

Accents

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):

• 22:43, 1 March 2006 (accent marks removed from four instances of the word "Sera")
• 20:56, 27 June 2006 (accent marks added to six instances of the word "Sera")
• 22:35, 28 November 2006 (accent marks added to two instances of the word "Que")

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:

• 19:02, 28 June 2005: Whatever Will Be, Will Be moved to Whatever Will Be, Will Be (song)
• 20:57, 26 July 2005: Whatever Will Be, Will Be (song) moved to Whatever Will Be (Que Será, Será)
• 01:20, 31 July 2005: Merged from Que sera, sera
• 18:04, 11 August 2006: Whatever Will Be (Que Será, Será) moved to Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Qué Será, Será)

For encyclopedic accuracy, the article name really should be consistent with the song title. Athænara ✉ 00:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[Hilarious (to me) footnote: the edit summary for the revision of Talk:Que Será Será (House episode) as of 04:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC) reads: "moved Talk:Que Sera Sera (House episode) to Talk:Que Será Será (House episode): proper title uses spanish future tense, which contains an accent over the 'A'"—hilarious to me because I spent half the afternoon getting the scoop on the wrongness of the addition of spurious accents to this title.] –Æ. ✉ 02:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The name of the article

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:

• Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)   [google hits: ~ 43,000]

→ examples: the sheet music, many album covers, at least one book cover.

• Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)   [google hits: ~ 28,000]

→ examples: in the Oscars database and The Envelope.com Awards database.

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)

The article name should match the song title, end of discussion. Also, I see you've been changing links with pipes where there doesn't seem to be any rational argument for simply correcting the page name and not piping the link at all.

A page can be moved without regard for incoming links - a redirect will be automatically created. The only caveat is that any existing redirects must be altered. It's a 5 minute job, which I will do now (taking you at your word that the title shouldn't contain accents). --kingboyk 08:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Pipes: My intention was to cause as little disturbance as possible to any of the many articles which linked the song (e.g. Stockwell Day may well have been widely quoted with accent marks, regardless of copyright, etc. in Canadian newsmedia).

Title: The original Livingston & Evans title has over 50% more response online than the altered title used in the AMPAS awards, and "Que Sera, Sera" between three and five times more than "Whatever Will Be, Will Be." In the absence of a clear consensus here, why choose a title with so much less traffic? –Æ. ✉ 21:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikification

This article doesn't look like a stub any more.

• Sorted the sections/lists chronologically as much as possible.
• Could not confirm the Columbia catalog number;
  • commented it out; it's still in the edit box if someone else can confirm it & wants it back in. °

    I don't know why you could not confirm the catalog number. Do a Google search on Columbia 40704; you'll find loads of people offering the record for sale and such. I think that's about as reliable as can be found! -- BRG 16:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

→ Thanks. I don't know why I couldn't find it then. Æ. ✉ 20:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

• Moved Tommy Steele medley from trivia to covers;
  • could not learn the year of or otherwise confirm the recording;
  • commented it out but, like the catalog number, it's still in the edit box waiting to be confirmed. °
• Photo of the plane named Que Sera Sera (first to land in Antarctica) would be a nice touch
  • There is a link in that line to a page with such a photo - the host ("Puckered Pete") might be willing to let it be wikiused.
• Fixed the Charlie Kosei citation - Sinnic is right, Kosei was the singer, not the composer.
• Added a brief section, with links, about the language of the song title. Athaenara talk 06:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I removed the markup that commented out two ° items because keeping them hidden reduced the likelihood that other editors will see them and find confirmation of them. I should have done this sooner, sorry! –Æ. ✉ 00:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Dead like me

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)

family motto "Che sarà, sarà"

The article states that the origin of the phrase is a "fictional" italian family motto from a movie. But the phrase has been known much earlier: Charles Dickens wrote (in "Hard Times", from 1854): "There's an English family with a charming Italian motto. What will be, will be.", and the Italian phrase has been quoted by e.g. Victor Hugo (Preface to "Cromwell"), or George A. Lawrence ("Guy Livingstone"). --mst 18:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

"Che sarà, sarà" seems to be the motto of the Russell family (Dukes of Bedford). --mst 18:36, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

That is interesting, and it can perhaps be incorporated, keeping in mind that this article is specifically about the Livingston & Evans song itself, not about the phrase. The phrase is fictional in The Barefoot Contessa, the film with the motto which motivated Livingston's choice. — Athaenara ✉ 05:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, the phrase itself would then not be fictional. It's a real motto that has been used in a movie. Or would you call a movie song a fictional song? 212.144.131.60 22:07, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

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)

Did Doris speak Puccini?

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)

Livingston and and Evans, not Day, wrote the song. In re Puccini's Madama Butterfly, I suppose you mean "Viene la Sera" ("Night Has Come") in Act 1. — Athaenara ✉ 20:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I do indeed. Heart-meltingly beautiful. Puccini conquers all, let us therefore surrender to Puccini (even while suppressing the ungracious thought he might be, at bottom, a sentimentalist). Whereas L&E's song is simply catchy and sunny. May it live a thousand years. (And I think you'll find that Mahmud Han is actually Mahmud Khan). PiCo (talk) 01:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Cover vs. Cultural Reference

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)