Five-year-old children can learn to recite alphabets. Of course, they
usually have the benefit of a melody or chant rhythm to help them along.
(Would you like to write a song?)
In Greek, so much of the alphabet corresponds with English, that the
exceptions are all you need to note, like the fact that "Zeta ate a theta"
and got "i" indigestion, or that by the time we finally get to "you" that
all that is left is phi chi psi and omega. The exception gamma is easy
because it comes at the very beginning, and the only difficult letter is
xi, which as a result is frequently overlooked, and I don't know of a
mnemonic to help, except that mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, do have a nice
rhythm.
By the way, thanks for the input on Matthew. Although taken literally the
passages implies an outside source, I tend to agree with Carl that it might
be gnomic and possibly "passive deponent". My friend, however, has been
studying Greek in one of the traditional seminaries, whereas I have not had
the opportunity to so study. Thus, I rely heavily on information gleaned
here, including the recent discussions on these very topics. I plan, with
everyone's leave, to print the responses and give them to my friend. Even
if it shoots down one of the points he had been considering, better now
than after he's turned in his thesis. He is very cautious about making
leaps in logic based soley on interpretation of tense and/or voice, and
would not like to leap in either direction without sufficient evidence that
solid ground awaits his landing.
Ellen