o | о | ο

Both Latin o and Cyrillic о originated from Greek letter ο (omicron), which, in turn, was adopted from Phoenician alphabet. According to Wikipedia, the name of Phoenician letter 𐤏 was ʿayin, meaning “eye”, its shape was that of, well, an eye, and it was ultimately derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph 𓁹 ı͗r. (That is, “eye”.)

In many languages, o can constitute a whole word. For example, in Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Tagalog and Tok Pisin o is a conjunction meaning “or”. In Russian and some other Slavic languages, о (or o) is a preposition with a variety of meanings such as “about”, “of”, “on”, “against”, “upon”. In Scots, it is a preposition “of”. In Scottish Gaelic, “from”. In Welsh, both “of” and “from”. In Romanian, a feminine singular indefinite article. In Greek, ο is a masculine singular definite article. In Turkish, a pronoun “he”, “she”, or “it”. In Guaraní, it means “house”.

Oh! Almost forgot: in many, many languages o is an interjection. Meaning “oh” or “O”.

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e

The Latin E is one of several letters derived from the Greek ε. Apart from being the most frequent letter in, for example, English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and (especially) Dutch, in some languages e can constitute a whole word.

In Italian, Portuguese, Spanish e a number of other Romance languages, e is a common conjunction meaning “and”. In Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, e is a pronoun for “he” or “him”. In Hungarian, this word means “this”.

The transcendental number e (2.71828...) is a mathematical constant, the base of the natural logarithm. In physics, e is a fundamental constant known as the elementary charge. Also, e is a symbol for the electron, sometimes written as e⁻ to avoid confusion with the positron, e⁺. In astronomy, e denotes orbital eccentricity, a parameter that determines the amount by which an object’s orbit deviates from a perfect circle. Finally, ℮ or the estimated sign is a mark that you can see on many pre-packed goods (such as chocolate bars and bottles of drink) sold in the EU.

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a | а

Apart from being the first letter of Latin alphabet, a can constitute a whole word.

In modern English, we chiefly encounter a in a role of an indefinite article. In Spanish, a is one of the most common words that serves as a preposition. In Russian and some other Slavic languages, а (or a; Cyrillic letter а looks exactly like Latin a) is an interesting conjunction which may variably mean “and”, “and yet”, “but”, “whereas” or “while”.

In physics, a is a common symbol for acceleration. For example, Newton’s second law can be written as

F = ma where F is the force, m is the mass.

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