Inserting our Greek letters into words
 

Hey Sisters,
Around campus I've seen other sororities and fraternities use their Greek letters and replace them with actual letters in words (for example, Phi Sigma Sigma used their letter in the word COLLEGE). After seeing those shirts I've tried coming up with ways to use ours but I am rather unsuccessful. Do any of you have any ideas for words our letters could work in?

Emily

pi_love_emily, I'm not sure what you mean. Is there an example? Maybe we could all work on something for you.

Sorry for the crash. I think she means something like this:

HΦME or CΦLLΣGΣ

We ♥ any crashers who are nice!

Okay, I get it now! Sadly, I can only think of
AcaDemiaPhobia!

Can somebody else PLEASE do something better?

I might be on the other side...I don't like seeing the misappopriation of Greek letters (though the Phi Mu "Home" is cute).

For example, look at the name of television show GREEK, where the "E"s are Sigmas.

Maybe it bugs me because people refer to Alpha Xi Delta as AZD (in writing, they use a Z, because the English pronunciation of the letter Xi is pronounced "zee" when following a vowel. In Greek it's pronounced "ksi" as the "x" is pronounced in "box"). I usually write it out AXiD, but I have seen other members write out AXD.

Sorry, but I have to say it -- I'm sure some at GC expect me to say it: It has nothing to do with following a vowel. That's a Greek urban legend.

The Greek pronunciation of the name of the letter X (Xi) is ksee. (In Greek, X = ks and i always = ee.)

Because in English we don't typically start a word with an x sound and instead substitute a z sound (xylophone, Xavier, Xerox) the anglicized pronunciation of the name of the letter X is zee.

But because we also tend in English not to pronounce a single i in a one syllable word as ee, the Americanized pronunciation of the name of the letter X is zeye. (We do the same thing with P, F, C and Y.)

It has nothing to do with what letter comes before it. It's simply that Alpha Xi Delta chose to use the pronunciation of the name of the letter X closer to the Greek (like Alpha Phi did with the pronunciation of the name of the letter F). That's all.

That said, as a general rule, I'm with you on substituting Greek letters for English ones -- it looks like we don't know what the letters really are.

During recruitment we always see the Phi Mu "HΦME" and that made us start thinking what in the world could you do with Gamma Phi Beta?

Well it did not take long to come up with "ΓΦΒBING boys hearts since 1874". My point being, you may have to think up a phase instead of just one word.

I think it just looks like we are trying to be creative with our letters... why try to make it more than it is... most people, atleast Greeks, know what it is you are doing/saying. I have even seen ppl insert their line numbers in to their line name like "In2ative"

Well, Prince does that too.

If you're going to do anything with phrases, use what the Greek letters ACTUALLY STAND FOR. The Sigmas used as Es thing irritates the crap out of me too...and it can have the bad effect of being translated backward the same way. I have actually had members of other sororities (looking at a paper with our letters on it in Greek) refer to my sorority as "Alpha Epsilon Alpha." :rolleyes:

Thanks to GC (and probably you, actually) I know this. I've tried to tell my chapter sisters this but they look at me like :confused:

And ree-Xi, when I see AXD or AZD, I die a little inside.

I know how you feel. I'm the same way when I see somebody write my letters as YU.

I just stumbled across this...
http://getsomegreek.com/assets/galle...tos/002015.jpg
In honor of this wonderfully enlightening "Xi" debate, I figured I'd share this with you.

ETA: Just remembered some from a while back...Kappa Sigma's "KollegΣ." (It makes me shudder just looking at it!) and Sigma Chi's sΣXy

I know about the whole "ksee" thing because of MysticCat too lol.

And OMG. A relative bought me a this cute little doormat from Greekgear.com.
Well, it would've been cute, had it not had a HUGE AXD on it. I promptly returned it and got a bag instead lol.

Plus, I know her intentions were good, but I kinda don't want to wipe my feet on my letters anyway.

AZD needs to die. A lot of my chapter sisters use that all the time and I am very quick to say hell no to AZD :)

the Gamma Phi one is cute!

Is it supposed to be robbing? It took me a ridicilously long time to figure this one out -- I kept wondering if "Gobbing" was some slang term I'm too old to know. :o Then finally it occured to me that maybe the G was supposed to be a lower case R. The fact that everything else was upper case threw me.

LOL. At least I've accomplished something in my life.

I understand how you feel. I'm the same way when I see PMA for Phi Mu Alpha. P =/= F.

I apologize for spreading mis-information. I actually visited some Greek/English translation sites and I read this more than once.

And Lovespink, that's why I write out "AXiD." It looks funny but it forces people to recognize the letter Xi.

I am also member of Gamma Sigma Sigma; people used to call us "REE". Hence my name, Ree-Xi.

MysticCat,

Is anybody young enough to understand what "gobbing" is??? Hahaha. I tried doing the lower case, but it just did not make my point. I guess I'm so use to people calling us "rob" all the time, that the gamma and lower case r just are one in my mind.

Love,
A Gamma Phi aka Rob

Haha so my boyfriend was looking at the letters that are on girls who live in the sorority floor's windows and he saw Gamma Phi Beta and said,

"Wait, there's a sorority called rob?" So I corrected him, saying the first letter was a gamma (mistakenly thinking that that was the only letter he needed to be explained). He then replied,

"So it's gob?" I could have smacked my own head. I said no, of course, and explained that if one was to pronounce it phonetically it would be something like "guhfuhbuh". He has now proceeded to call them (since that explanation) "guhfuhbuh".

And 33girl I completely feel your pain on the sigmas not being e's thing. People have legitimately asked me how I like being in "Tri Epsilon"

... uh, Tri Ep all the way? Haha.

My favorite are the people who pronounce it as one long "e" sound.

I do remember before I went Greek wondering why girls were walking around with EAT across their chests though, haha.:rolleyes:

I O M or 0M all day every day for this Phi Mu! lol

I also love the Phi Mu "No Place like HFME". It doesn't look contrived. I keep trying to think of one for ADPi (pet peeve: people who say Ay Dee Pee), and have come up with mostly bad ones.

A
Damn
Pretty (Popular)
Sorority!

Or

A
Darling
Princess!

It's easier to do with the school's name, and maybe that would look better, too.

I am guilty of that as well :rolleyes:

A personal pet peeve of mine is when people think Im in Alpha Omega Pi (thanks to the movie Pumpkin) or when they make the 'O' in Omicron a long sound,like Alpha Ohhh-micron Pi...uggghhh its "Ahhh-micron" LOL!

Oh and this is the only thing Ive seen our letters in:
NAturally
SOme
LeTTers
Stand
Out!

Speaking of being mispronounced my dad calls us I needa pee...or Ay Dee Pee....he does it just to irritate the mess out of me and cause he thinks he is funny. Can you tell he was sort of anti- Greek.

On another note I really can't think of anything out letters "fit" into. ANd honestly I don't like the way they look in words very much. The delta and pi look really out of place in those words. I definately think the pi works better as two tees in letters. As for the delta im clueless.

I wonder if it would work better if instead of using ADP you tried using A, D and PI? Not that I'm thinking of a good example this morning: A Diamond sPIrit. :o

LOL. I hereby propose that "gobbing"/"to gob," meaning to royally screw up recognition of Greek letters, become officially recognized as GC slang. Example, "That guy just asked if I was in Tri Epsilon/ROB/Alpha Epsilon Alpha/EAT . . . . He completely gobbed it!" (Or "what a gobber!")

:D

The AOIIs here frequently write "MASOΠ" on signs and banners.

A friend of mine is a DG at UD and she has a t-shirt that says "DELAWΔΓE"

A recent pledge class in my chapter made t-shirts that said "WE MΔKE IT HAPPEN."

I thought it was a pretty clever use of their pledge class letters in the slogan.

When I was a Rho Chi, my PX partner was so frustrated and kept saying, "That's S-D-T, ladies, not STDs!!!"

Don't worry. A girl walked up to be before, looked at my letters and said, "OMG! Sigma Alpha Epsilon?!?!"

I figured most people knew Alpha from Phi... or just Alpha in general.

I've seen I LOVΣ CΦLLEGΕ, TAKΣ ΦVΕR, and ROLΣ MΦDΕL for us on T-shirts. We don't usually incorporate our letters into anything.

We do use the term SigEpic a good amount, though.

Lol!!
That's hilarious :D

The Delta Gamma chapter on our campus had recruitment shirts reading "GLΔMOΓOUS" and I believe Sigma Delta Tau had something like " ΣΔT Your Heart Out.”

I really cringe at the misuse of Greek letters!!


I did not know that! I had to look this up and was shocked that the primary pronunciation is Ahhh (but a second allows for Ohhhh).

The SigEps here have a shirt that says REΣΦΕCT on them.

That's pretty cool using SPE that way (even though it's really SFE but most SigEps don't say that). From an outsider's point of view, though, it'd look like REEOEECT.

Sorry for not checking back on this thread sooner, but this was definitely my chapter's philanthropy shirt this year, LOL

not sure if anyone is still reading this but one of my sister's just posted this as her facebook status
AMDZIPG

I think I've seen this shirt around my campus....

but I could be mistaken. I don't make it a point to look at Greek shirts, but this looks familiar.

Cute slogan btw

A few days after I posted this, I came across pictures from our Purdue chapter. They were wearing the same shirt, but in maroon. So I wouldn't be surprised if you saw them on your campus.

I believe "The AmaXIng Challenge" is the name of the new national philanthropy event (although we have a few different specific events to chose from). So maybe many chapters got this shirt??

Usually once those types of printed shirts (if from the same company) are made they save them so other chapters can customize and order them so i wouldn't be surprised if they initially came from neither chapter.