Hawaiian

About Hawaiian

Hawaiian, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, is the Polynesian language of Hawaii and an official language of the state together with English. After decades of decline it has been revived through Hawaiian-medium schools, but UNESCO still classes it as critically endangered. About 26,000 people spoke it at home in 2010.

The Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters: the five vowels, eight consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w and the ʻokina). The ʻokina, written like a turned apostrophe, is a short catch in the throat, as in the middle of "uh-oh", and it counts as a real letter. A line over a vowel, the kahakō, makes it long. Both marks can change the meaning of a word, so they are worth keeping. A few guides here are about Hawaiian Pidgin, the English-based creole spoken across the islands, which is a different language.

FamilyAustronesian, Polynesian
Speakersabout 26,000 speaking it at home (2010)
Official inHawaii (United States)
Statuscritically endangered (UNESCO)
ScriptLatin alphabet, 13 letters
Codehaw (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: US Census Bureau (2010), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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