Things that I learned from Wilkepedia
Language in title and lyrics
There has been some confusion about the identity of the language in the song's title and lyrics. The words are Spanish, but the phrase is ungrammatical in Spanish. Composer Jay Livingston had seen the 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa, in which an Italian family has the motto "Che sarà sarà" carved in stone at their ancestral castle. He immediately wrote it down as a possible song title, and he and lyricist Ray Evans later respelled it in Spanish "because there are so many Spanish-speaking people in the world." [4][5] Both Evans and Livingston probably had learned some Spanish during their early experience as musicians on cruise ships to the Caribbean and South America.
Although "Che sarà sarà" is also ungrammatical in modern standard Italian (where the idea could be rendered "Quel che sarà sarà"), it does appear in an English context over 400 years ago, in Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus (Act 1, Scene 1), whose text contains the line "Che sera, sera / What will be, shall be"). The Italian version of the saying (spelled "Che sara sara") also has served as the heraldic motto of the Dukes of Bedford (England) since at least as early as 1749.[6] It is not known whether Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter and director of The Barefoot Contessa, was aware of this use of the slogan.
Spanish-speakers tend to hear the lyric not as an assertion, but as the question "¿Qué será?" ("What will it be?" or "What's going to happen?") — with the second word simply echoed to fit the music. Compare the (unrelated) song "¿Qué será?" by José Feliciano, whose lyrics ask "¿Qué será de mi vida?" ("What's to become of my life?").
"Whatever will be, will be" could be rendered in grammatical Spanish as "Lo que vaya a ser, será" or "Lo que haya de ser, será."
Technically, the title is correctly translated French for "what will be, will be," with "sera" being the futur simple conjugation of the verb "etre," which means "to be." However, the songwriters were likely unaware of this
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Is this like the homoiousios and homoousios controversy which caused so many Christians to lose their lives?
ReplyDeleteNat, Wonderful, you made me in crease my fount of knowledge. For those who are unfamiliar with those words:The terms homoiousios and homoousios mean "similar essence" and "same essence." They were part of a controversy in Christianity during the 4th century when people disagreed over the nature of Jesus Christ and his relationship to God.
ReplyDeleteAccording to those who adopted homoiousios, Jesus was not the same as God but simply had a "similar essence." According to those who argued for homoousios, the doctrine which was eventually adopted as orthodoxy, Jesus and God had the exact same essence.
I would suggest for those interested to look up the "Synods of Antioch"(264-269) and the Cannons of the First Council of Nicaea (325CE).
I might add that throughout history most lives have been lost due to differences in the interpretation of a religion. Western history is full of rampant genocide in the name of the true religion.
In Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of his earlier "The Man Who Knew Too Much," Doris Day sings Que Sera, Sera twice--the second time using the song to let her son, who is being held hostage, know that she is there--it is a beautiful moment in that film, Doc!
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