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“Que sera sera”: The English Roots of a Pseudo-Spanish Proverb
Lee Hartmann
Sažetak
“Que sera sera” has become a proverb in English, meaning “What will be will be”: an expression of cheerful fatalism. Today it appears in spellings that resemble those of Spanish (usually), Italian (less often), or French (occasionally), but it is ungrammatical in all three of these languages, based on an erroneous merger of the English “free relative” what (‘that which’) with the interrogative what. From its first documentation (in 15th-century England) and its adoption as an English heraldic motto (beginning in the 16th century), through its use by English-speaking authors in the speech and thoughts of fictional characters (especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries), and up to its appearance in Doris Day’s 1956 hit song “Que Sera Sera (What Will Be Will Be)”—the proverb has appeared almost entirely in English-language contexts. Corpus searches show that the phrase has virtually no history in Spain or Italy: neither among proverbs nor in running prose. A possible origin in Middle French is suggested, but evidence of its grammaticality in that language is inconclusive. Some writers, misled by its form, cite it as evidence of a fatalistic attitude in Mediterranean cultures.
Ključne riječi
corpus linguistics; fatalism; free relative pronoun; heraldry; mistranslation; mottoes; proverbs; pseudo-Italian; pseudo-Spanish; “que sera sera”
Hrčak ID:
278383
URI
Datum izdavanja:
31.8.2013.
Posjeta: 1.506 *