Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0507: Learn Greek letters (complete system)

Episode Date: February 16, 2016

Learn all the letters of the Greek alphabet, including capitals, lowercase letters, and letter sounds, using mnemonics. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 507. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. TJ expressed interest in learning Biblical Greek. Now this is something that I've been working on for a while, on and off, and something that another listener, Florian, is going to be collaborating with me on to create a complete biblical Greek course so that you can not only understand most of biblical Greek in the New Testament, but will also go through an entire

book of the Bible and show how that can be translated. Meanwhile, for this episode, I'd just like to expand on episode 333, where we talked about learning the Greek letters. I talked about some mnemonic ideas for learning both the way that the letters sound and the way that the letters are formed when they're changed from the, you know, capital letter to the small letter. Today I'm gonna go through all the letters one by one and talk about mnemonics for remembering each letter, including not only what it looks like but also what it sounds like and what the small letter

derivative looks like. Now of course it would be most helpful if you could have the Greek alphabet in front of you, but if you don't then that's fine, you can always revisit this episode later. Now I'm gonna go through these letters twice, first to talk about each one and what it looks like, what it sounds like, and you know to give it a little bit of character, and then I'll tell a different story to talk about how the small letters are formed based on the big letters. First of all let's just talk about these big letters. Many of them are very similar to letters that we have in the modern Roman English alphabet, and so for example alpha and beta are just A

and B. And they basically sound like what you would expect A and B to sound like. The third letter is gamma, and the way that you can remember that is it looks like a gallows. So the sound is g, and it looks like a gallows. Next we have delta, and if you're familiar with the delta symbol, that won't be too hard, and the sound is d. Next is delta, and if you're familiar with the delta symbol that won't be too hard and the sound is. Next is epsilon, and this is the letter E, but it's a vain letter E. It's big and it's square and it likes to go to the salon to try to look beautiful. So think of but epsilon. Next we have zeta, which is like the letter Z, but it's pronounced more like the non-US way of saying the letter Z, Zed. So think zeda.

Now edah is a quite different letter from what we may be used to, and think of it as a cave. So it looks like the English letter H, but what it really is is a sound that sounds like A. So think of a cave and think of the two kind of compartments on the top and bottom of the H. And if you think of the letter cave, then you'll remember A for Eda. Next we have Theta, which looks like it's holding something inside it, and it's holding something special and saying saying this is mine. So if you think of the th sound that's the theta sound. Next we have iota which looks like the letter I. Now to remember which sound it makes you might just imagine that this very streamlined letter is falling or is even jumping up and down on a trampoline

and saying ee. So it's very good at jumping up and down and it's very streamlined and it likes that experience. So it says ee because it's fun. So that's ee or iota. Next we have kappa which is just basically a k and then we have lambda which is sort of like a cross between an l and a lamb. So the sound is l and the the word is spelled kind of like a lamb with a da at the end so lambda but it looks like the letter L kind of sideways or if you wanted to turn the L into a lamb you would turn the L over so that the two legs of the L make the legs of the lamb. Next mu and nu are basically m and n. And then we have xi, which is kind of like x. So if you look at xi, it looks sort of like it might be a mechanical contraption that's always

spinning and making mechanical sounds like x, x, x, x. So you're thinking x. So that's xi. Next, we have omicron, which looks like like an O and you might just use an additional mnemonic for cron but it's basically the letter O so omicron. Next we have pi or P and it looks like a pi and so just remember the letter P for that. Next we have rho which oddly enough looks like a P so it's actually an R. So imagine that this letter R that's missing part of it goes up to a microphone, and knowing that it's missing the part of it

that makes it look like an R rather than a P, it nervously says into the microphone, er. So that's the letter R that looks like a P. It's nervous, so it says er. So that'll help you possibly remember that that's not a P, it's an R. Next we have sigma, which looks like a folded piece of paper that you might wave around and it makes sort of a hissing sound, so ss.

Then tau is basically the letter T. Then upsilon, that's a bit complicated. You might think of the sound uh or ug, and look at it as an athlete who's in a triumph pose. So upsilon just won a race. He puts his arms up and he says, uh, I'm the best. So that's uh for upsilon. Next we have phi and it looks like it's blowing on a feather or something. You might just imagine that. So phi is ph. Then we have chi. And just think of chopping something.

So we have chi based on the way that that looks. And then psi looks like it might be a candle holder of multiple candles. So if you imagine that you're snuffing out candles, we have this interesting Greek sound, ps, like P-S. So imagine what the sound of snuffing out candles is like, maybe with a little bit of water, and it sounds like. Finally, we have omega, which you might imagine is sort of like a hybrid between an O and an M. If you had an M and then you inflated an O inside of it, it would end up smashing the M around it and looking like an omega symbol. And this basically makes the sound of O.

Some of the nuances of the vowels I haven't quite figured out yet, but it's not a huge deal because New Testament Greek isn't really for speaking so much as for reading. Now, those are all of the letters in the Greek alphabet. But what happens when you turn them into small letters? The concept here is that they fall off of something and when they land they've been transformed into something smaller. That way you can always look at the large letter and remember how to write the small letter because you just imagine it falling and what would happen to it, or

you can look at the small letter and remember what the large letter was. So the large letters are generally easier to identify especially based on the mnemonics I just gave you, but you're probably going to encounter the small letters more often. So let's relate the two to each other. We're going to place them into different groups rather than the arbitrary order of the alphabet. We're going to use these groups that have to do with the way that they look when they land. And there's a total of about seven groups. So first of all, several letters, when they fall, you'll want to imagine that they land in a tight spot trapped between two things. And it kind of stretches them out when they land. So you might imagine them landing in traffic cones.

And the letters that do that are beta, gamma, phi, chi, psi, and omega. So in beta's case, the beta fell down, but when it landed, the stem of the B kept going, and that's why the stem sticks down farther. It's stuck down into the cone. Gamma just kind of looks like it fell into a tight spot. Phi lands in a tight spot, and kind of like beta, the stem or the middle keeps going and stretching down. And then with Psi, that's kind of the same thing there. The middle kept going. And then with Omega,

the middle squeezed and the side stuck up a little bit when the Omega fell into the tight spot. The next category is a bunch of people that just kind of changed as they fell. So delta, while it was falling, it kind of got its edges rounded. So instead of looking like a triangle, it looks more round. And then as it was falling, it also had a part that stretched up. So if you just imagine that these three letters, delta, alpha, and omicron, are just falling and falling for a long distance. The delta is rounded and stretched. The alpha ends up looking like it's all rolled up, so it

looks like a small letter A in the English alphabet. And then the omicron kind of shrank while it fell, and that's all that happened to it. So the alpha and omicron are fairly simple. The alpha is like a lowercase a in English, and the omicron is like a lowercase a in English, and the omicron is like a lowercase o in English. The next category of letters basically act like dead spiders when they fall. They curl up a little bit. So epsilon, kappa, iota, tau, p or pi, and roll all ended up curling up a little bit when they fell, like a spider's legs when it dies. So epsilon, you'll see its corners all curled in.

Kappa, everything curled up like a dead spider. Iota, the bottom curled up just slightly. That one modified the least, perhaps. Tau curled a little bit. The pi curled also and looks like the English symbol for pi or the modern symbol for the mathematical pi. And then ro, it just curled a little bit as well. So those all curled up. You might place them all in one place in a memory palace and imagine them falling to the ground with a bunch of dead spiders.

Next, we have two more letters that were modified while they were falling rather than when they landed. So we have zeta and xi. And what happened here is that they both sort of spun a lot when they fell. And this spinning twisted them all up. And you'll kind of be able to relate that to the original, although they look generally very different from the original. Just imagine that the zeta spins and ends up twisted up as it is, and then the same thing happens to the Xi as well. Next, we have Eta, Mu, Nu, and Upsilon, which all broke when they hit the ground. So Eta broke, and instead of an entire cave, all that's left is the bottom part, just maybe the stalactites that are hanging down in the cave.

Then we have Mu, which turned upside down, broke, and reassembled improperly. So it's very hard to relate the mu to the original m, the lowercase one to the capital, unless you imagine that it turned upside down and reassembled in some way. Nu is pretty simple. It's brittle, and it lost the main stem, so it looks almost like a V instead of an N now. And then epsilon smashed when it landed, and the bottom stem is now missing. So all four of those just kind of broke when they landed on the ground. Theta and lambda both fell sideways. So with theta, you'll see that it smashed sideways as it hit the ground. And then lambda, when it fell sideways, slid a little bit. So instead of looking like an almost perfect upside-down V or sideways L, it slid a bit so that the stem on one side or the line on one side is sticking up

further than on the other side, and that's what happened when it fell sideways. And then lastly we have sigma, which is the most complicated because it has two small forms. In both forms, instead of being a folded up piece of paper, as we think of sigma, it actually unfolds and turns into something else. In the first form, it turns into a rolled up piece of paper. So it's a roll of paper instead of a folded piece of paper. And in the second case, it turns into a wavy piece of paper. But in both cases it's still a piece of paper and it's still sigma. So you can relate that

to the original folded piece of paper which is our mnemonic for sigma which is like the letter S. So that's it! This process makes it pretty easy to learn all of the Greek letters which is really the first thing that you have to do before you can start learning how biblical Greek works, because you can't really read anything unless you know how the letters work. And I'm looking forward to diving more into this project in the near future. Now, speaking of the near future, by way of announcement, in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be traveling without a microphone. So I'm going to give you something a little bit different in these next two weeks.

The episodes won't be in the normal format, but they will be on the topics that we've been maintaining over the last several weeks. And they'll also be a little bit shorter, but I think that you'll like them. For the rest of this week, though, we'll be still on the normal format. And tomorrow we'll be working on

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. So stay tuned for that. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.