From alpha to omega

Mary Norris’s book about her love affair with Greece and the Greek language starts with a terrific chapter about alphabets. That may sound like an oxymoron, but I was fascinated to learn why the Y and the Z come at the end of our alphabet. When the Romans were adapting the Greek alphabet, they ditched these letters because they didn’t need them. Later, when they started using Greek words, they wanted them back, so they tacked them on at the end.

Equally, it’s nice to know how it comes about that, in England, we pronounce the letter Z as Zed — unlike in America, where Zed’s dead (and they say Zee, baby). It’s a throwback to a time we would have called it Zeta, after the Greek letter. Obvious, once you know.

And how about upper-case for the big letters and lower-case for the small? In early printing, it turns out, the metal type was kept in drawers or cases. The big letters were in the upper case, because they were less often required; the small in the lower case, which was easier to reach.

There’s plenty more where this came from, but most of it is packed into the ‘lower case’ of Norris’s first couple of chapters. Greek to Me becomes more personal as it goes along, which for the reader, unfortunately, translates into an experience of diminishing returns.

Norris was inspired to explore the classics when she saw Terry Gilliam’s film Time Bandits at the cinema in 1981. It was the sight of a manly, middle-aged Sean Connery, who appears in a cameo as Agamemnon, that did the trick. So it was an erotic impulse, at least in part, that first sent the young bluestocking on a mission to Greece.