I'm always on the lookout for places online with insightful Korean Language learning tools and information. They're pretty hard to come by. Some time back, I found a website by a guy named Ken Eckert, that includes a section he calls "sloppy Korean." I don't know enough to judge how sloppy the Korean is, but the romanization is so random and poor that I have to work hard, squinting my eyes, so I don't see it.
How hard is it to master the single page of rules published by the National Institute of the Korean Language? Or… if you really hate the South Korean government's official "Revised Romanization" (and I know some people do, including many linguists – but I'm not one of them), there's the perfectly acceptable McCune-Reischauer system, still in use by the North (as far as I know). Regardless, in what linguistic universe is romanizing 어떻게 [eo-tteoh-ge] as "auto-keh" a good idea? I suppose it's motivated by a hope that people will be able to more easily, accurately pronounce the Korean. But if someone is far enough along to be trying to learn phrases at the level presented, I think they'll be OK with hangeul at that point.
I suppose this is one reason why learning Korean is such a struggle for me. With my own background in linguistics, and a strong underlying perfectionism, I have a need for people who are experts in Korean yet who also have some good linguistic training or background. But, in fact, most experts-in-Korean are extraordinarily lousy linguists, and I get frustrated and annoyed very quickly with all their bald-faced linguistic misconceptions and inaccuracies.
Oops. I ranted.
Having said all that, I don't really mean to complain. Or rant. I genuinely appreciate the effort put into it, and the phrase-level translations of colloquial Korean are well-organized and extraordinarily useful. The above makes me sound like the worst kind of ungrateful internet peever-troll imaginable. So I should apologize, forthwith, and not post this. But, um, I'm posting it.
Still, I highly recommend the site to anyone interested in working on Korean. Thanks, and sorry for the rant.