“It was like laying a corner stone of an important edifice for the nation.”

“It was like laying a corner stone of an important edifice for the nation.” The planning for the formal written Hawaiian language in the early part of the nineteenth century was started by the Protestant missionaries who arrived in Hawaii, starting in 1820. A committee of some of these missionaries (Hiram Bingham, CS Stewart and Levi Chamberlain) worked on the development of the Hawaiian alphabet. Toketa (a Tahitian, arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1818,) who had learned to read Hawaiian after an hour's instruction, wrote a letter for Kuakini to Hiram Bingham, requesting copies of pages of the spelling book being assembled. “(Bingham) immediately answered in the Hawaiian, under date of Feb. 8th, 1822, one month from the first printing for the nation.” (This was the first correspondence back and forth in Hawaiian.)

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