I’ve been talking to an attorney who pronounces this, not as I would (in the French style) or even in a vaguely Americanized French way, but in some strange neither here-nor-there way, something like “voyer dyer,” even after I’ve pronounced this in my own elegant French style, rolling my "r"s all over the place.
Am I being pretentious or does a lawyer (who seems to do a voir dire every other week, it seems) not understand that the term is French?
I’d go with a declamatory Muad’Dib! and hope no one notices.
What does “voir dire” mean in US law?
Now say it like Joe Pesci!
It refers to the questioning of prospective jurors by the lawyers, to get a sense of whether they would be suitable members of the jury.
Most people I know try to pronounce it as close as they can to what they think it sounds like in French.
I’ve never heard “voyer dyer,” but “voyer deer” isn’t unheard of. Most will take a shot at “vwar deer.”
vwauhr deer
Ha ok, a voir dire tip would be:
vohar deer
war
woar
I put three different voir tips, cause it’s gonna be harder to say properly anyway.
Something like “voyer dyer” is somewhat common in parts of the American South.
This is the closest I’ve seen to how I say it.
I say the first word to rhyme with the way I say noir, which is to say I do pronounce the r.
Neatly proving that some sounds just cannot be transliterated into English 
“ee” is too long a sound. The French “i” does have a similar sonority but is not stressed nor involves a diphthong. And of course "r"s are pronounced completely differently in the two languages.
Short of IPA, there’s just no way to write how “voir dire” is supposed to be pronounced (or how it’s pronounced in French at any rate), because English just doesn’t feature those sounds.
It’s not so much French as “Law French,” basically courtroom French dating back to the Norman conquest that English speaking lawyers have been twisting for a couple of centuries. It doesn’t translate in modern French; the Law French meaning of voir dire is “to speak the truth,” whereas in modern French it would translate to something more like “to see saying.” My Black’s Law Dictionary lists at least three different pronunciations for “voir dire,” each arguably correct. A quick wikipedia check shows that 30% of English words come from French, so it’s not as if this is a special instance of a French term losing its original French pronunciation.
It also refers to the examination of expert witnesses to determine if they are qualified to testify (as occurs in “My Cousin Vinny” hilariously)
My Cousin Vinny is the only time I’ve heard the phrase used with that meaning.
O yez?
Was the first time for me too, but it’s apparently the correct term (see Daubert standard - Wikipedia).
My lawyer friend practices about 500 feet from Mexico. So this may be a regional pronunciation?
I’m getting this image of two little fawns staring into a window with bulging eyes and shocked, fascinated expressions. You know, voyeur deer! 