The Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters
The Hawaiian alphabet, with only 13 letters, is one of the world's shortest, reflecting the language's unique, vowel-rich phonetic structure and Polynesian origins.
The Hawaiian alphabet is one of the world's shortest, with just 13 letters. It features five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and eight consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w, and the ʻokina). This unique structure, developed by missionaries in the early 1800s, perfectly captures the language's soft, flowing sounds. Before this, Hawaiian was an oral tradition.
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