Its origin is Latin for god's sake. The "æ" in mæmo is a grapheme. "æ" ...it is a twisting modern-wise... of some current and older languages.. it is originally from the Latin "AE". It used to be pronounced and spelled far differently than currently ... as AE in Latin. Old English changed that with "æ" pronunciation of "æ" in the modern context of current (doggerel) languages is a short "a" ... as in "fat" , "bat" , "at" , "cat" So figure it out.