Talk:Glossary/@comment-16916378-20131003150110/@comment-114.179.18.35-20140623214547

You don't necessarily need to indicate long vowels. Rather, long vowels are usually omitted in most proper nouns. We don't write 東京 and 大阪 Toukyou and Oosaka; we write them Tokyo and Osaka. So I think Soryu and Oi should be preferred than Souryuu and Ooi (for 蒼龍 and 大井) because omitting long vowels is the most commonly used method, at least for proper nouns.

Even when the long vowels are not indicated in romaji, in most cases, people who know Japanese can tell the vowel length when they see both the romaji and the kanji. For example, if one sees both the romaji Soryu and the kanji 蒼龍, one can tell it is originally そうりゅう in hiragana because 蒼 is read そう not そ, and there is no kanji that is read りゅ, so it is clearly りゅう. For Oi and 大井, one can tell it is originally おおい in hiragana because 大 is read おお not お or おう, so it is clearly おお. In most cases, people who know Japanese can figure this out like this. Thus, you don't necessarily need to indicate long vowels in most cases.

What about people who don't know Japanese? They don't care about the hiragana spelling (to begin with, they can't even read hiragana) and the vowel length in Japanese.

So I would like to go with not indicating long vowels (Soryu, Oi, etc).