Rotokas alphabet

The Rotokas language of Bougainville uses a Latin-based alphabet of just 12 letters.

Most sources say 12 letters, but Guinness lists 11, depending on how letters are counted.

Context

Rotokas is spoken by a few thousand people in the central part of Bougainville, an island region of Papua New Guinea. Its Latin-based writing system was developed in the twentieth century and is routinely cited as having the smallest alphabet in use.

The language has very few distinct sounds, so few letters are needed to write it. Most descriptions give the alphabet as 12 letters, with five vowels and a small set of consonants. Guinness World Records lists the Rotokas record with a count of 11 letters, so published totals differ by one depending on how a letter is classified.

The small inventory does not make the language simple. Rotokas has its own grammar and a rich vocabulary, and linguists have studied it partly because its sound system is so compact. Written words still run long because each sound needs a letter.

Even with these differences in counting, no widely used alphabet in the world is described as shorter, which is why the record has stood in reference books for decades and why it appears so often in language trivia.