Re: Mnemonics for the order of the alphabet

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 07:45:32 -0500

At 5:19 AM -0500 4/14/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Somebody out there *has* to know a good
>mnemonic for remembering the order of the Greek alphabet. Would you like to
>share it with me?

This may be an instance of items requiring as an answer Euclid's "There is
no royal road to learning."

The mnemonic I use is:
"alpha-beta-gamma-delta-epsilon-zeta-eta-theta-iota-kappa,
lambda-mu-xi-omicron-pi-rho-sigma-tau-upsilon-phi-chi-psi-omega"

If you discover a better one, I'm all for it, but I do this sing-song
whenever I'm thumbing through a lexicon. And if you discover a good one,
you might have figured out how to memorize the telephone directory!

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/