Greek Alphabet
 

I have NEVER been good at memorization, but I would like to memorize the Greek alphabet. Does anyone have any memorization techniques they can share so I can remember the alphabet past "theta"? Thanks in advance.
http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif HumbleBumbleBee http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif

I have a problem with memorization, too. Oh well, a little A.D.D. never hurt anyone. I think what I did way back when I memorized it was just to take it in groups of 4 letters at a time. Then just string the groups of 4 together.

Dumb technique. But it worked.

Good luck,
DeltAlum

Try remembering the greek alphabet in a song. That should be helpful.


Tinese
SGRHO

Here is a little rhyme, courtesy of From Here to Fraternity By Robert Egan:

This is Greek and how they spelt her-
Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta,
Epsilon, Zeta,
Eta, Theta,
Then Iota, Kappa too,
Followed up by Lambda, Mu,
Nu, Xi,
Omicron, Pi,
After that, Rho, Sigma, Tau,
Upsilon, Phi, and still three more,
Chi, Psi, and Omega's twenty-four.


Give it and try and please post again if it works. Happy memorizing. http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif

If you can't remember the Greek Alphabet, you have a long way to go.

I hope some of you could help me out with some pronounciation of these greek letters. Most of them I've heard from campus. But these two I haven't: Xi and Chi. How do you pronounce these two?? Thanks so much.

Xi = Zi (long I)
Chi = Ki (long I)

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Steve Corbin
Lambda Chi Alpha
Theta Kappa Chapter
Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech.

Whenever I needed to memorize long lists, I had a little trick that worked the best for me. Take the first letter and say it a few times, add the second and say them together, and the next one, and continue to say them out loud, and so on. I would just read the list out loud over and over, and eventually it would just stick in my head. Give it a try or modify it to your own preference (add 3 at a time, or whatever). Have fun memorizing...

AXPAlum

http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/biggrin.gif Wow, this brings back memories of a year-long candidate period!! I associated a universal constant from chem/physics/math classes...the association works, believe it or not!

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equeen
A Lioness has her Pride!
@>--;--
Alpha Sigma Kappa - Women in Technical Studies

Don't forget that when the letter Phi is preceded by a letter ending in 'a' (alpha, beta, etc.), it is pronounced FEE not FI (long I).

Barb

Do the webpage for the Office of Greek Life of your university. I didn't know the letters before - now I will remember them, and the way they're said, until the day I die. http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif

Pretty Poodle,

You took the words out of my mouth. I think it really may be a difference between GLOs and BGLOs (not to bring up that topic again). I heard a girl at my school refer to Alpha Phi as Alpha Phi (fee NOT fi (long "I"). I was like what? Not only do we prounounce it witha long "I" within the Fraternity/Sorority name itself (but even when saying your chapter, I haven't heard someone say "I am from Beta Phi (fee) Chapter.

I would also like to know if this is "written" someplace. Just to know, ya know?

PEACE ALL

From the history of Alpha Phi Fraternity:

A professor of Greek at Syracuse University instructed the women to pronouce the letter Phi as "Phee" since this is gramatically correct following the vowel Alpha.




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Fraternally,
Barbara
Zeta Tau Alpha Alumna

If you have to go around telling everyone you're in charge you're not much of a leader.

As far as pronounciation goes:

Our Americanized Greek alphabet uses a hybrid of Greek and English pronounciations. The Greek way to pronounce letters like Phi, Chi, Psi, Xi and Pi would be Fee, Kee, See, Zee, and Pee, respectively. Also, Beta, Zeta, Eta, and Theta are Greek and we pronounce those letters, "correctly"

For instance, Phi Beta Kappa in Greek would be Fee Bayta Kahpa. In English it would be Fie Beeta Kaypa. However, we use a hybrid which we know as Fie Bayta Kahpa.

Conversely, more often then not hybrids are the norm in GLOs. One major exception would be FIJI, aka Phi Gamma Delta. Make the connection.....

I know we've been through this whole vowel this before, but this is my take on it.

Please correct me if I'm wrong because I'm no Greek expert!

PnguinTrax, I think they mean that Alpha itself is a vowel, not that Alpha ENDS in a vowel. You used the examples Alpha and Beta. Although they both END in vowels, only Alpha is actually a vowel, hence the difference in pronunciation. Beta itself is a consonant. So the rule works not with "a letter ending in a vowel", but rather when a letter IS a vowel.

Don't need to go into this whole thing again, but I hope that clarifies things a little. http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif

Oh, and RainMan--that was very interesting! I never heard of "hybrids" when discussing Greek/English pronunciations before! http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif

WOW!!!


I have truly learned a WHOLE BUNCH from this particular thread.

Keep the information coming.

Rain Man...very interesting.

Okay...every other Greek I know (including myself) had to learn a song...but, I had already learned Greek to some extent before. In "Learning About Sororities", the NPC pamphlet, there's a chart which lists the two different pronunciations. I had learned well before I had heard of Alpha Phi that the correct GREEK pronunciation was "fee", and I had known that Phi Mu was "Fee Moo", not "Fie Mew".

Where is this written? Just curious cause there are a lot of organizations that pronounce it as FI.....(zeta phi beta, alpha phi alpha, iota phi theta...)

**Don't forget that when the letter Phi is preceded by a letter ending in 'a' (alpha, beta, etc.), it is pronounced FEE not FI (long I).**

Liana - you've got it! you need some sort of pressure activity to learn the Greek alphabet. It won't be lists or songs that will help you...

I learned it when I was a pledge (back in the olden days of hazing and "pledges"!! 1991) because we did this Field Day activity that all the sorority pledge classes competed in, and you had one minute to spell out the whole Greek alphabet WITH YOUR BODIES in teams of three girls.

Not so much pressure as immersion. There's a lot of work to do on a Greek Life webpage for a major university, and I learned it went a lot quicker if I didn't look up the letters every ten minutes. I've been working on this page for months, and I'm days away from being done ^_^

Here's a page with both pronunciations www.geocities.com/macmarv/kappabet.html

Finer Woman - you are so right! It really was. The Field Day event is always two or three weeks after the new members pledge, so the girls are just really getting to know one another well, and it's a great bonding experience. Plus, since all the sororities participate, you get to see all the girls you haven't seen since rush (since they have all been busy with activities in their own chapters). One of the fraternities hosts the day-long event, and the main competition is a food drive for an area food bank.

Liana - I hear you!!! I administer a Greek website right now, and to me, the GLOs are actually ACW, ADP, AEF, CW, KAQ, DSQ, FKY, PBF, etc. I almost recognize the "symbol" translations quicker than the actual Greek letters now!

I have learned a lot from this post thanks all and just for reference sake I learned the greek alphabet by the "group" method and then once I knew it, I wrote it over and over again as fast as I could, just because the spelling throughs me off, but do what ever you need to do to learn them.

That's too cute! The comraderie displayed must be incredible in the competitions.


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Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated...Every Finer Woman's Dream!

I wish I could learn other stuff as quickly as I did the alphabet. I learned it by "logic" (I associated it with our alphabet, and compared the differences). (eg, ours has 26 letters, the greek, 24).It took about ten minutes.


Easy E www.angelfire.com/va2/gammachi

...and then it gets really interesting, when you trying to differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters...ACK! http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/biggrin.gif

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equeen
A Lioness has her Pride!
@>--;--
Alpha Sigma Kappa - Women in Technical Studies

Try Pledging!

My pledge class learned the greek alphabet by "singing it" to that old nursery rhyme-"Itsy-Bitsy-Spider"! It works!

I just did it and that is so cute http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif

We sung the alphabet to the Barney tune. Everyday or even twice a day you must sing the alphabet, write the symbols in order, write the symbol and put it with the right letter. Practice everyday until you can get them all right. You must if you want to be greek!!. Speaking of the Phi- Fee. A member of Alpha Phi told me if there was nothing following the Phi, you pronounce it Fee. If something follows it (Alpha Phi Alpha) then you pronounce it Phi.

do you have to know the greek alphabet to join a sorority/fraternity?

We learned the Greek ALPHAbet by singing it as a ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA chant.

No, you don't. However, learning it may very well be a part of your education/pledge process. It's not hard to learn though, after all you learned the arabic (i think that's what it is anyway) alphabet and it has 2 more letters! I don't know the greek alphabet in order, but i can name all the letters, mostly just from the chapters on campus! Plus each one of our officers has a greek letter as the name, Alpha=pres, Beta=VP, etc. I'm Rho-Alumni Chair

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Steve Corbin
Lambda Chi Alpha
Theta Kappa Chapter
Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech.

[This message has been edited by Corbin Dallas (edited August 07, 2000).]

Try learning it in groups of 5. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon...etc.

I'm agreeing with everyone who learned the alphabet by singing. My 5th grade teacher sung the alphabet to us & to this day I can still sing it.

This website has both upper & lower case forms of each word including there English name: http://www.msoe.edu/~tritt/greeklr.html

I just wanted to post an update: I did finally learn the alphabet; ironically just days after my intial post http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/biggrin.gif. I want to thank everyone for their pointers, have a nice day.

http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif HumbleBumbleBee http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif

Soror AKA2D:

Are you thinking of the same thing I am? As Ivies, we had song that I loved (still do) in which we sung all the letters, then ended with a special AKA-specific part. :-)

DG

yep...that's the one....I sing it all the time, but we changed the words after we crossed...

SSSSSSKKKKKEEEEEEE-WWWWWWWEEEEEE!

I always heard that since Alpha Phi was a sorority, Phi was pronounced Fee because it was in the feminine tense. Also, I never know how Phi Mu's want their name pronounced. Fi Moo or Fi Mew...

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RM