The thread on Tijuana got me thinking about this:
Pronounce: Que Sera Sera.
Of course it’s Doris Day’s signature song and she says:
Kay-Sa-Rah, Sa-Rah
OK flash forward to the mid 80s and you have another #1 song Lost In Emotion, where the singer pronounces it differently, she says:
Kay-Sarah, Kay-Sarah. As in the name Sarah.
Which one is more close to being correct?
I’ve no idea of the intentions of whoever wrote it, but I pronounce it the first way and have never heard it any other way.
I’ve always pronounced it the second way, but then I was always mocking the phrase, knowing it was really pronounced the first way.
I say “kay seh-rah, seh-rah” with a short “e” sound, and not a schwa or short “a” or whatever is meant by the first pronunciation (I’m not sure.) While I anglicise the “r,” I also don’t quite do a full “AY” sound in the first syllable, but rather an “é.”
According to *wiki *the Doris Day version is probably closer to the right pronunciation. It’s sort of spanish, sort of Italian so should probably be sah rah with emphasis on the second sylable rather than seh rah (which is how it sounds like she is saying it to me), but that’s splitting hairs.
Both are incorrect. The proper Spanish pronunciation is something like “Keh sehrah, sehrah”, accent on the final syllable of (forgive the non-IPA phonetics). However, the phrase is actually ungrammatical in Spanish. Quick googling reveals that the original language was 400 year old Italian.
Missed the Edit, then got beaten to the correction: bah, I was wrong about the pronunciation. Seh rah is right. I got the spelling wrong in my head when I was writing my last reply.
The Lisa Lisa version in my mind is the more correct because it is a Latinate pronunciation, with the Spanish intonation and accent, perhaps closest to the original than Doris’s distinctly American pronunciation.
She was also trying to fit measure and syllable count into a song. Another consideration.
I remember when I heard “Lost In Emotion” it took me awhile to figure out Kay-Sarah was actually Que Sera 
Actually that would be a cool name for a girl Kay-Sarah Smith
Doris nailed it.
Doris’s way.
I think some people have been mispelling Sly Stone as “Doris Day,” whoever that is (I do love the tune “Secret Love,” though – good Hammond tune). She did ruin the Hitchcock movie though, her and that little kid – I think she teleported into the movie “Shane” as well to ruin that one too. She got her meathooks in that little kid, and not even Coop could save the day.
Actually, Doris pronounced it “kay, seh-dah, seh-dah” rather than "kay, seh-rah seh-rah. Cite
The Spanish “r” is different from the English “r” (or, at least, the American English “r”). Almost a “d” sound, but the tongue never quite touches the roof of the mouth.
I noticed in playing the scene in Youtube that what she was saying sounded a lot like a “d” but not full on. That explains why. Thanks.
Obligatory reference to Quine’s entry in his “Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary” about the paperia and voiced/unvoiced consonants.ssshh
ETA eah I think I missed an accent there – I grew up with another one of those Romance languages and I still can’t be assed to get accents in a language I actually know, unlike Spanish, which I can understand, but can’t speak. Ceteris paribus, supply your own accents.
A flapped or trilled R is not a D. It exists in some varieties of English as well.
Yes, but it’s rarely just a flip. There’s usually some rhotic in there, too.
And it does sound really weird to use an American accent for every other letter, but not the R.
Also, if it’s Italian, shouldn’t it be kway Seh-RAH seh-RAH"?
It’s an old Italian (mis?)quote translated into ungrammatical Spanish because the English speaking songwriter thought it sang better that way. So in this case the songwriter probably gets to dictate pronunciation as it is half way to just made-up anyway.