I must number myself with the laughing medievals. That vice versa would be pronounced weeka wairsa by anyone at any time makes me laugh and laugh, right along with Beevis and Butthead (“Huh. Huh. You said weeka wairsa.”); and medieval visitants Bill and Ted concur in this view.
Readers of Dr. Boli’s age may remember how that Latin phrase became nativized in the United States in its English pronunciation. In the nineteenth century, many rural American accents made a final schwa sound into an ee sound, so that, for example, the name “Matlida” was pronounced “Matildy.” Thus the native American pronunciation of vice versa became “vicey-versey.” You may decide for yourself whether that is more or less comical than the classical pronunciation. It became slightly less comical when we nativized the phrase still further by omitting the final syllable of vice, which to Dr. Boli’s ears took all the music out of it.
When judging the effects of the classical pronunciation, we should not forget the scholars Sellars & Yeatman, who, in their seminal work 1066 and All That, wrote:
Julius Cæsar was therefore compelled to invade Britain again the following year (54
b.c. , not 56, owing to the peculiar Roman method of counting), and having defeated the Ancient Britons by unfair means, such as battering-rams, tortoises, hippocausts, centipedes, axes and bundles, set the memorable Latin sentence, “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” which the Romans, who were all very well educated, construed correctly.The Britons, however, who of course still used the old pronunciation, understanding him to have called them “Weeny, Weedy and Weaky,” lost heart and gave up the struggle, thinking that he had already divided them All into Three Parts.