Hawaiian alphabet Hawaiian alphabet The Hawaiian alphabet (in ) is an alphabet used to write Hawaiian. It was adapted from the English alphabet in the early 19th century by American missionaries to print a bible in the Hawaiian language. In 1778, British explorer James Cook made the first reported Europe voyage to Hawaii. In his report, he wrote the name of the islands as "Owhyhee" or "Owhyee". In 1822, a writing system based on one similar to the new "New Zealand Grammar" was developed and printed by American Protestant missionary Elisha Loomis. The original alphabet included five vowels and twelve consonants: and
Old English Latin alphabet 12th to 13th centuries. Additionally, modern manuscripts often distinguish between a velar and palatal and with diacritic dots above the putative palatals: , (cf. the Maltese alphabet). The "wynn" symbol is usually replaced by . Many scholarly works use only and not (the sounds were allophones in Old English and the symbols were used somewhat interchangeably). Macrons are usually found in modern editions to indicate putative long vowels, while they are usually lacking in the originals. In older printed editions of Old English works, an acute accent mark was used to maintain cohesion between Old English and Old Norse printing.