Beet of a meex up (Read: Bit of a mix up)

"Call Zaheed or call /ərwiːn̪d̪/", said my Gujarati client to his production person on the phone. He obviously was, in politically correct terminology, phonetically disadvantaged, in that he couldn't get himself to say /ɐr(ə)ʋɪn̪d̪/, which is how I prefer my name to be pronounced. Phonetically disadvantaged - maybe. Surprising - not in the least.

It's more or less common knowledge that Gujjus and Maharashtrians (by extension Konkanis) have trouble distinguishing between the long /iː/ and the short /i/. Instead, the /i/ is pronounced long or short depending simply on its location within a word. 

If the word is monosyllabic with the only vowel being /i/, then it’s long.
If the word is polysyllabic with the /i/ in the first syllable, it becomes short.
If the word is polysyllabic with the /i/ not in the first syllable, it becomes long.

Some illustrative examples are the Marathi words /t̪iːn/ 'three' but /t̪israː/ 'third'. Compare with Hindi /t̪iːsraː/, with the same meaning.

And of course, some hilarious hypercorrections.

This may apply for the long /uː/ and short /u/ as well, but my personal observation is that while Marathi speakers tend to treat them just like the /i/, i.e., long or short depending on their position within a word and the type of word, whether monosyllabic or polysyllabic –

e.g. /d̪uːd̪ʱ/ 'milk'; /d̪ud̪ʱaːtsə/ 'of the milk (neut.)'

the Gujjus seem to deal with them a tad better. 

As far as the /i/ is concerned, it seems all three of the above speaker groups are guilty of messing up long and short vowels, simply because they can't pronounce them they way they may be originally intended to. This is usually the case for tatsama words from Sanskrit -

e.g. Marathi /ɟənəhiːt̪/ in place of /ɟənəhit̪/'public interest'

As far as English imports are concerned, there seems to be a tendency to hypercorrect - 

/bic/ 'beach'
/ʃiʈ/ 'sheet'
/ɖiːp/ 'dip' - usually meaning whether you want your idli/wada brought to you immersed in the sambar, as opposed to having the sambar brought to you in a separate bowl

The reason for writing this post is the numerous સ્ટેટ બેંક ઓફ ઈંડીયા /sʈeːʈ beːŋk oːf iɳɖiːjaː/ 'State Bank of India' signboards I encountered in Ahmedabad. It actually got me thinking whether the aforementioned languages should actually have one of the signs for short and long /i/ and /u/ eliminated from their script, since their pronunciation is dependent only on occurrence within a word, making two signs redundant.