romanization

Transliteration into English is an interesting concept that I still think about from time to time even though I'm not eye-deep in linguistics anymore. Earlier generations of phrase books in languages of the Indian subcontinent for English speakers - probably Raj-era - had things like "Hindoo" and "saree" where today we'd certainly have "Hindu" and "sari;" the double-vowel spelling looks not just wrong but offensive to me now. Though I am neither a speaker nor a student of any such language, only a former student of language systems - so I should say the double-vowel transliteration looks wrong to me and makes me imagine it might be offensive to someone whose language was being transliterated this way. ... But I wonder why potatoes are still "aloo" instead of "alu." I'm confident there is a reason! - And I have never known what it is.