Old So What

  Having actually attended a French school for a few years, I can say with authority that this word:  “Voila,” is pronounced with a V in the beginning of the word.  That’s a V.  Voila, not a W.   Why everyone seems to go for the W is beyond me! Just one of those quirky, contagious mistakes, I guess.   So, it’s Voila! It means: “There it is” or “There you are.” As when you do a magic trick and it’s successful: you could say, Voila! (I did it, it’s done! Here it is!)   (For pronunciation of Voila, you know where to go:   your phone, of course.)

  In the Middle of a Colored Light Show on a Castle Rooftop in Poitiers, France in 1969… My family and I popped up out of the darkness, being that we had missed the start of the show by a few minutes, and we were sort of now the show. As we tried to back away from our embarrassment, we bumped right into a monument honoring the death of Leonardo Di Vinci, only they called him L é onard. Fast forward to 2023, while watching a murder mystery, filmed on French TV, another castle rooftop popped up this time in Amboise, France. Another monument to Leonardo.   I get it, it’s the French version of the joke:   Washington Slept Here.