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
Romic alphabet their English "short" sounds when written singly, and their "long" sounds when doubled: Sweet adopted from Ellis and earlier philologists a method creating new letters by rotating existing ones, as in this way no new type would need to be cast: The IPA letter acquired its modern pronunciation and first use with this alphabet. He resurrected three Anglo-Saxon letters, ash , eth and thorn , the first two of which had the pronunciations they retain in the IPA. The consonants were as follows by 1892: The vowels were as follows by 1892. In "wide" vowels, the tongue is described as