I was in Shinjuku the other day with a native Japanese speaker. He's looking at a map in Toshima ward, it's got a labelled place name but it doesn't have furigana; instead it has the currently popular fake Hepburn rōmaji that doesn't distinguish long vowels and short vowels. He goes on to pronounce the place name wrongly by shortening the vowel. I think not distinguishing vowel length just because they're romanizing the word is harmful, and it's weird to me that an entire nation is doing this onto itself. On computers, usually I add dictionary entries for あー→ā, いー→ī, うー→ū, えー→ē, おー→ō, or recently, I've discovered that Māori layout is pretty efficient for typing Hepburn rōmaji, but both seem hacky solutions. Is there a common, more standard way to type macron diacritics that I'm simply missing?
by QuarantineNudist