The Tour!

Hooray! The Tour de France starts tomorrow! I know a lot of people think bicycle racing is a silly sport, but I absolutely love it. For a bit of cycling vocabulary and some "Franglish", why not check out the BBC's Tour Phrasebook?

This year the Tour is setting off from London for the first time in its history. The BBC is full of other information on the race, including a good Tour tutorial.

Lance Armstrong, love him or hate him, he still wrote a very compelling autobiography called It's Not About the Bike. I found it fascinating.

Sports Illustrated takes a look at some of this year's main contenders.

Voila!

You've probably realized by now that we use quite a lot of French words in expressions in English. Sometimes we even retain a vaguely French pronunciation, but they are probably more often anglicized. One of my favorites [BrEng favourites] is voila!

You might guess from Spanish that it has something to do with looking or seeing, and it does. Very often it's the equivalent of something like "look (here)" or "here it is", or even "here you go".

"Simply apply the stickers in the proper layout (mapping scheme included) and voila! There's your Arabic-English keyboard"

"I took advantage of some of the cheap, cheap prices on decent LCD monitors these days, and voila! Two-monitors on my desktop."

"Mrs. Doubtfire; A Wig, a Dress and Voila! Dad Becomes the Nanny."