Ask ze German

[ignoramus]

Alex, you know the old adage where eg, when your parents force you to eat eg, brussell sprouts when you are young, and when you grow up you can't stand the sight of them.
( I can't eat any seafood for this reason).

Anyway, they forced me to do "greek" school after hours during my whole school life.
Back then the language still used all those stupid accent characters (5?), and add that to the cumbersome alphabet and it was not fun.
Living in Au, and no greek friends or relos ( just one sister who feels the same as I do), I feel as though this whole excercise was a huge waste of time. I did 5 years of Chinese at school, in retrospect, I would've been better off sticking with that.
Back to your question.
Nothing intrinsically special about any of the Greek letters. It's all about traditions dying hard.
These days, I believe Greece has done away with the accents, and I wouldn't be surprised if they've consolidated the superfluous letters i,o,s.
The irony is that science has borrowed the whole alphabet and will keep these obsolete letters alive forever.