The Tongan Alphabet

The alphabet in Tongan is much smaller than the english alphabet. It is as follows.
A E F H I K L M N NG O P S T U V '
the only new letter here is NG. Which is said just as it is in the word tonga. There is also a punctuation mark that is sometimes considered a letter. This goes either at the beginning of a word followed by a vowel or it goes in the middle of a word between vowels. Such as 'anga which means shark of faka'ofo'ofa which means beautiful. It denotes a glottal stop similar to when clearing your throat. Its very hard for most native english speakers to hear the difference between ono the number 6 and 'ono which means to carry something on your lap.

Vowels in tongan are the same as most languages besides english. E is said as a mix between a and eh between the word bed and rain depending in the word. For instance lele to run is said as lailai but hema wdhich means left is said as hehma close to the e in red. i is said as e and a is an ah sound. O is always a long o and never makes an ah sound.  Most english speakers say tonga as tahnga but it is really supposed to be tohnga. O as in open. U is still u. The greatest thing about tongan is once we understand these simple rules it becomes very simple to read tongan. Every word sounds exactly as it looks, there are no silent letters or different sounds exact as was explained with the letter e. If anybody has any questions please ask.


   -Sitalingi