Vwa-Lah, Wa-Lah, Wa-La: The Many Misspellings of Voilà

Voilà is a French borrowing into English that has mostly retained is Francophonic pronunciation: \vwä-ˈlä\, or \vwah-LAH\. It is clear that the \v\ in the pronunciation of voilà is sometimes not heard, and this, combined with the mismatch between voilà’s spelling and pronunciation, has led to a number of misspellings of the word based on its pronunciation. We have seen evidence for vwa-lah, vwah-la, wa-lah, wa-la, wah-lah, wallah, and even viola (for those who remember the letters in the word, if not the particular order of them). While these misspellings are more common in informal writing, we have started seeing them in newspapers and other edited sources as well. The correct spelling is voilà: if you have a hard time remembering how to spell it, you can use the mnemonic that voilà very often is misspelled.