The Korean language is classified as an Altaic linguistic family, a group which also includes Mongolian, Hungarian, and Finnish. The Korean Alphabet, "Hangeul", is completely different from and independent of the Chinese and Japanese alpnabets. Hangeul 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 Hangeul letters and their romanized equivalents. This romanization system is based closely on the McCune-Reischauer(M-R) system and is followed in this publication. M-R romanization differs substantially from that of English and may take a little while for foreigners to get used to. (There are some vowel and consonant sounds that English does not have.)