alexpgp | Questions and (some) answers...

I enjoy listening to the Daily French Pod from time to time, as the speaker takes great pains to enunciate words clearly (as opposed to the lecturers from the Collège de France that I download via iTunes, where mumbling is pervasive, but I digress...).

So as I was listening to the podcast on "le flic" ("the cop"), it occurred to me to wonder: What is the difference between a gendarme and a policier?

One of the great, yet vaguely annoying, things about the Internet is that quite a number of questions that have just occurred to you have already been asked online. And answered (your basic Mark 1, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose scenario).

I googled the question "Quelle est la différance entre un gendarme et un policier?" and got a pageful of hits in response. The first one, from Yahoo! France, did the trick: The police work in cities and operate under the Interior Ministry; gendarmes would appear to work outside of cities and draw pay from the Defense Ministry.

At least that appeared to be the consensus among several different answers.

I don't know how useful this information might be, but still, an itch has been scratched.

* * *One question that I have not yet researched, but which occurred to me in concrete form yesterday is: "When memorizing, say, a poem, why do some lines lodge themselves in your head permanently and effortlessly, while others require much greater effort?"

I've no time to address that now, though. I'm over the hump as far as my current workload is concerned, but I am reminded of the old saw that goes, "After you finish the first 90% of the job, take a deep breath, exhale, and then continue with the second 90% of the job."

Cheers...