Should 「ソウル」 be pronounced as "so u ru" or "so: ru"?


According to the ipadic attached to [Mecab](https://code.google.com/p/mecab/),
it's "so u ru".

According to the bccwj dict attached to
[Julius](http://julius.sourceforge.jp/), it's "so: ru". Which one is correct?
Or are they both OK?




ソウル is the pronunciation given in the NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典, but both pronunciations
are in use; some speakers pronounce it ソール instead.

From _The Sounds of Japanese_ (Vance 2008), pages 67-68:

> Katakana spellings of recent borrowings and foreign proper names with ウ (
> _u_ ) instead of ー (the length mark) do represent /ou/, but these are rare;
> _Souru_ ソウル 'Seoul' in Table 3-8 is one of very few examples (and many
> speakers do have the pronunciation /soHru/ rather than /souru/).37

From footnote 37:

> 37The entry in Kindaichi and Akinaga 2001 gives ソウル (implying /ou/) first
> but also gives ソール (implying /oH/). NHK 1998:1015 gives only ソウル in its list
> of foreign place names.

Note: the /H/ symbol in phonemic transcriptions indicates a long vowel.




ソウル is the pronunciation given in the NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典, but both pronunciations
are in use; some speakers pronounce it ソール instead.

From _The Sounds of Japanese_ (Vance 2008), pages 67-68:

> Katakana spellings of recent borrowings and foreign proper names with ウ (
> _u_ ) instead of ー (the length mark) do represent /ou/, but these are rare;
> _Souru_ ソウル 'Seoul' in Table 3-8 is one of very few examples (and many
> speakers do have the pronunciation /soHru/ rather than /souru/).37

From footnote 37:

> 37The entry in Kindaichi and Akinaga 2001 gives ソウル (implying /ou/) first
> but also gives ソール (implying /oH/). NHK 1998:1015 gives only ソウル in its list
> of foreign place names.

Note: the /H/ symbol in phonemic transcriptions indicates a long vowel.

