2814: British vs American English: Borrowed Vowels pt. 2 Sep 3, 2024

One area where British English is very clearly wrong is loan words with the letter I, such as Tel Aviv, Pizza, and cliché. Although common in Germanic languages, also seen in German with the /ɪ/ vowel also usual for the letter I, as in Kindergarten and Blitz, most other languages treat the letter I as the /i/ sound; some Turkic languages avoid this problem by having invented a new letter. For clarity, [ɪ] is the vowel of ‘sit’ and [i] is the vowel of ‘seat’. 

Although historically, as in a lot of European transliterations of Native American or Aboriginal Australian words /i/ was written as <ee> (likewise [u] was written as <oo>), in the last century almost every language uses the letters (I and U). Since I is usually either natively used for /i/, or used as such to represent that sound in languages that use a different writing system, the usual British use of /ɪ/ in loanwords here is only understandable given how much more typical it is in English, but could not be said to be an effort for a natural or authentic sound. 

However, there are exceptions to this rule on all sides

•American English does do this with older words that are clearly loans, like ricochet .

•British English pronounces ‘clique’ but American English un-tenses the vowel. 

•The Latin ending I is pronounced /i/ natively but in English becomes [aɪ] as in fungi or alumni, but this is usually only true of loans, not in quotes and phrases like “veni; vidi; vici”