Which alphabet has just 13 letters?


	July 1, 2025

Original photo by YinYang/ iStock

The Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters.

Less is more in the Hawaiian alphabet, which consists of just 13 letters: A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, W, and the 'okina, which represents the glottal stop consonant — a sound produced by the abrupt obstruction of airflow in the vocal tract. Known as ka pīʻāpā Hawaiʻi in Hawaiian, the alphabet traditionally lists the five vowels first and also includes the kahakō, a bar above vowels that indicates an elongated vowel sound.

When British explorer James Cook made the first known European expedition to the Hawaiian islands in 1778, he spelled the islands' name as both "Owhyhee" and "Owhyee." Hawaiian was purely an oral language at the time; its written form wasn't formalized until American missionary Elisha Loomis printed a primer titled simply "The Alphabet" in 1822. This written alphabet initially consisted of 21 letters before being standardized in 1826, although four of the original letters (F, G, S, and Y) were included only for the purpose of spelling foreign words. Other letters — B, R, T, and V — were excised because they were considered interchangeable with existing letters.

By 1834, Hawaii's literacy rate was estimated to be between 90% and 95%, one of the highest in the world at the time. But the Hawaiian language declined in usage after 1896, when Act 57 of the Laws of the Republic of Hawaii made English the "medium and basis of instruction" for all schools, after which schoolchildren were sometimes even punished for speaking Hawaiian. The language has seen a resurgence since the 1970s, with several groups working toward preserving it.

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Hawaii was an independent kingdom for nearly a century.

Six years after George Washington became the first president of the United States, another ruler came into power on the other side of the Pacific: Kamehameha I, who established the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1795 by conquering the islands of Maui, Moloka'i, O'ahu, and Lāna'i. Kauaʻi and Niʻihau joined willingly 15 years later, making every inhabited island part of the kingdom. The House of Kamehameha reigned until 1874, when the House of Kalākaua came into power. The kingdom was overthrown in 1893 by the United States, which the U.S. officially acknowledged a century later with 1993's Apology Resolution. The joint resolution acknowledged that "the Indigenous Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people or over their national lands to the United States." The Hawaiian sovereignty movement continues to this day.