Greek alphabet

The other day somebody asked me if I knew the Greek alphabet, and I realized I didn’t. I managed to get just five letters in — to ε — and then I got stuck, which is not very impressive.

So I set about memorizing the whole thing, and it was surprisingly easy. For one thing, you can clearly see how our own alphabet is a variant, and that makes things loads easier.

Entire runs of letters essentially look like ABCDE or KLMN or OPRSTU. Once you see that, you’re about 80% of the way to having the whole thing memorized.

Also, there are only twenty four letters. I found myself learning it as six runs of four: First α, β, γ, δ, then ε, ζ, η, θ, all the up to the final φ, χ, ψ, ω.

When you break it down like that, it goes very quickly. And that’s pretty much the alpha and the omega of the Greek alphabet.

Now I want to memorize all of the elements in the periodic table. That might take a little longer.