Photo: Kristin Bae Mysen
This week I have been diving into the Greek alphabet. What a treasure trove !!! It seems like our whole civilization is more or less based upon it.
It is more than 4000 years old, and if you have a quick run through, you’ll recognize many words and symbols. From the first and the second letter ALPHA and BETA we have got the name Alphabet. From ALPHA which means “beginning” or “first” and the last letter OMEGA which literally means “great” but also “last” or “end”, we use the expression; “It is alpha omega” meaning the most important thing. In the Bible there is the famous passage (Revelation 1,8) where the Lords says “I am the Alpha and the Omega….”, the beginning and the end; symbol for eternity.
Most of us are interested in living a healthy life, therefore many of us take Omega 3, 6 and Omega 9. And isn’t the symbol for Swiss luxury watch Omega? More or less all the letters function as a point of departure for physics, chemistry, cosmology and mathematics. For instance all of us have learned about PI 3,14 at school, and being a language teacher I was thrilled when I found that THETA and EPSILON are part of the International phonetic alphabet. And last but not the least in 2019 the new Munch museum opens in Oslo and it is called LAMBDA due to the same shape as the eleventh letter.
Besides, being an aesthetic freak I also find the letters to have a beautiful design and now the alphabet is framed and is hanging in my office.
