Wah-Wah-Wes

[Grant Barrett]

On Sunday, November 28, 1999, Salikoko S. Mufwene <s-mufwene at UCHICAGO.EDU> wrote:

>songs is "Wild, Wild West" but I swear all I heard was "wah-wah-wes"
>[wa:wa:wes]. So Tazie said, "Daddy, the song would not be the same if one
>tried to pronounce that sequence correctly."

My take on the pronunciation has glottal stops ending the Wild Wild, though maybe
not. It's hard to tell; that song's been strained through so much signal processing
there ain't much original left.

This particularly bit--"Wah-Wah-Wes"--was repopularized this summer via the flop
movie "Wild Wild West," and is a chorus sampled or borrowed from a song that was big in
the Eighties. I dunno who sang it, but some of the lyrics:

Guns
We don't like to use them
Unless
Our enemies choose them.
We prefer
To fight you all like a man
And beat you down
With our hands
In the Wild Wild West.

And your daughter's right in both cases.