 The Korean language is classified as a Ural-Altaic language, a group that also includes Mongolian, Hungarian, and Finnish. The Korean character system, "Hangul", is completely different from and independent of Chinese and Japanese. 'Hangul' was developed by a group of scholars under the patronage of King Sejong in 1443. It is composed of 10 vowels and 14 consonants. This unique phonetic alphabet is well known for its scientific syllabic system that allows great freedom of expression. The chart above presents the 24 Hangul letters and their romanized equivalents. This romanization system is based closely on the McCune-Reischauer(M-R) system. M-R romanization differs substantially from that of English and may take a little while to get used to. (There are some vowel and consonant sounds that English does not have.) |