... to rhyme with "glass", "ti" being pronounced /s/ in Gilbertese. It is said that the Rev Hiram Bingham jr, when he brought "civilisation" to the islands in the 1860s, neglected to ensure that he had enough "s" blocks in his printing set; but this seems to me too good to be true.
As 
arwel_p pointed out, one of the islands of Kiribati is Kiritimati Island, also known, with nearly the same pronunciation, as Christmas Island.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.