11 Comments

  2. Unknown's avatar

    I think there is a more “prestige” pronunciation of Ouija which breaks the joke or pun here. For it to work, you need to be saying it as everyone I knew growing up did, like wee-jee.

  4. Unknown's avatar

    I’ve never heard anyone pronounce it in any other manner. Lots of people know how to say “yes” in French and German, but that’s no longer relevant to the way we all say “Ouija” in English.

  5. Unknown's avatar

    Well, the alternate pronunciations I was thinking of are not with a German or Eastern Eurolpean -j- as “y”, but either (1) a French-like -j- as “zh”, thus all together wee-zha, or (2) an English -j- as “dzh” (normal English -j- as in “judge”), just as in the pronunciation we share, but a reduced vowel in the second syllable, thus wee-juh.

    So not a colossal difference, but the sharp high front vowel in ‘jee’ makes it pungent and distinctive, unlike the beige version with the schwa.

    Then of course there was the street photographer who adopted that word as his pseudonym:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weegee

  7. Unknown's avatar

    Mitch4, In case you’re wondering about the Moderation, you ran into WordPress’s “3 or more links” rule.

    I’m going to get ride of that, because the other safeguards again spam will suffice.

  8. Unknown's avatar

    I thought it might be that, even while noticing that the single second link (the one to the picture) was for some reason complex and must have counted as two for filter purposes. Thanks for rescuing it.

    I agree with the multiple people saying we only hear “wee-jee”; that is, I agree insofar as I mostly only hear that form. But the others are attested, and preferred in some sources. At http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ouija for instance, you get

    [wee-juh or, often, -jee]

    and switching IPA on,

    /ˈwi dʒə or, often, -dʒi/

    I can’t link to their audio clip apparently, but I listened and it is in line with their first written pronunciation.

    However, even if I prevail on the point of which is the dictionary-preferred and perhaps thus well-known pronunciation, I don’t mean to insist there are people who only/i> know wee-juh and for whom the joke/pun (which depends on [wee-jee) would fall flat.

    (BTW, interesting that this dictionary site has a little switch button to swap IPA and what they call “Spell” pronunciation indicators. Probably more helpful than using some other regularization system and providing a button that opens up a whole pop-up page of Key. Which I have seen today also.)

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