You say, Wallah. I say, Walla.

Actually, I say, voilà. Like it’s supposed to be pronounced. Leave it to people-too-lazy-to-use-a-dictionary to bastardize such a common word.

It’s voilà. Not wallah. Not walla. Not any other homophone rhyming with walla.

Sigh.

Oh, and technically, it’s bulla not boo-yah.

By Kim Siever

I am a copywriter and copyeditor. I blog on writing and social media tips mostly, but I sometimes throw in my thoughts about running a small business. Follow me on Twitter at @hotpepper.

14 comments

  4. Bulla is pronounced the same as boo-yah. That’s where boo-yah came from. Except people didn’t know how to spell it, so they made the spelling up. Which is sort of the whole point of my post.

  6. as a new orleans resident I am bombarded with horrible renditions of french words. Viola is really very minor in comparison to some of them

  8. Are there actually people who don’t pronounce it Voila! Amazes me.

    John

  10. I first saw someone use “Wallah” yesterday and thought it was funny. Saw it again today… Had no idea people could be such idiots.

  11. I was absolutely stunned the first time I came across ‘wallah’ on the internet. ‘Voila’ is a word I’ve known since I was little and it seems such common knowledge. I’m shocked that not only do some people think it’s pronounced and spelled ‘wallah’, they defend it as a legitimate English adaptation of the word. Sometimes that can be the case and the English interpretation becomes colloquially legitimate, but in the case of ‘voila’, it should really only be seen as something deeply ignorant that has unfortunately spread. To those that defend it, just learn the right word! It’s been used in English for ages and ‘wallah’ is a very recent misspelling/mispronunciation.

  12. I have noticed for quite a few years now and increasingly I might add the mispronounciation of “voila” as wallah or walla. Every time I hear it, it makes me cringe. When I hear it spoken in dialoge in a tv series, it really irks me. Voila is such a basic word in french and should be pronounced correctly especially on television which may be why the the incorrect version has spread.

  13. Haha! Wallah or Walla means “I swear to God” in Arabic. That’s totally different from the intended French word.

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