Depends on where in Germany. In the west most pronounce it like K. Like the the word China is pronounce Kina with a hard K. In east and north it is pronounced like a german sch like Schina. The c together with a k like in „backen“ or „lecker“ just sounds like a second „k“ („lek-ker“)
I and my colleagues all pronounce CLI the English way btw. But growing up I had a hard time with the word „cache“. I pronounced it the German way which sounded very silly.
I've never ever heard CLI pronounced as a word but always as an acronym spelled, "see ell eye". Pronouncing as a word seems odd, like pronouncing PII as pie or IPX as epic.
In my experience, non-native english speakers pronounce it as "klee". But IBM is just I-B-M (because you cannot actually pronounce it like a word). In general, if the acronym can be pronounced like a word, non-native english speakers will do so. More examples of acronyms that are pronounced like words: AMI, GUI, BIOS, ios, RAID, ROM, RAM, DIMM.
> Plus, why should "GUI" get a pronunciation but "CLI" be neglected?
It's probably because the person who made the acronym or initialism had wanted it to be pronounced a certain way and chose a sequence of letters to achieve the desired result. Of course, the speakers of the letter-group will later decide when and how they will pronounce it!
Acronym: a word formed from the initial letters
or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or
series of words and pronounced as a separate word [1]
Initialism: a set of initials representing a name,
organization, or the like, with each letter
pronounced separately [2]
In the mid-90s, there was some controversy/discussion over how to verbalize "WWW". Very unwieldy in its spelled-out 9-syllable form! So one of my coworkers proposed "dub-three" - two syllables - so sorry it never caught on.
