I have worked for some time in Germany and this is how some coworkers pronounced it, but I do not know where were they from. From what you say I assume that th

I have worked for some time in Germany and this is how some coworkers pronounced it, but I do not know where were they from. From what you say I assume that the literary pronunciation is also with long "i", which is good to know. Perhaps they were influenced by the different spelling, because I have seen this phenomenon in other countries, where despite a mostly phonetic writing some words were spelled differently than pronounced, for etymological or other reasons, and then the pronunciation of those words by many people has shifted, matching the spelling and not the traditional pronunciation.