You're killling me Mark!
I did misspell TYE-toh. But it's still a long-i sound. And I'm pretty sure there's only 1 "t" in there.
I just had a thought. I have a baseball game tonight and there are 5 native Japanese speakers (1st language) on my team. Ages range from early 40's to late 50's. So I think it's the right demographic. I'll ask each one for permission to record his pronunciation of "Taito". Perhaps I can get both the stand alone word and the word as used in a (Japanese) sentence. Then I'll go home, watch Star Trek, and totally forget to share my findings with KLOV.
Ok, the Jury is in. It's TAH-ee-toh for the win!
I typed the word on my phone then asked 3 Japanese team mates and 2 non-native fluent speakers. I approached each one separately and asked them to pronounce the word on the screen and every one said the same thing: TAH-ee-toh.
Except Toshi. He started with "Is that the video game company? TAH-ee-toh."
I forgot to ask if he's on KLOV.
Found this too:
And this (super weird) one:







