Olelo Hawai'i

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian family, closest to the Marquesan and Tahitian tongues. Voyagers from the Marquesas settled the Hawaiian archipelago from roughly 300 CE, and later arrivals from the Society Islands and Samoa-Tonga shaped the language as it evolved in isolation. The language has five vowels and eight consonants and was carried in genealogical chants (mele), prayers and oral histories rather than in writing.

Captain James Cook's arrival in 1778 opened the European phase, and the Hawaiian youth ʻŌpūkahaʻia, who reached New England, inspired the American mission whose first company landed in 1820.

The Protestant missionaries devised a Latin-script orthography, adult literacy spread within a generation, and schools multiplied across the islands. The first Hawaiian-language newspapers appeared in 1834, a printed vocabulary followed in 1836 and Adelbert von Chamisso published a grammar of Hawaiian in 1837.