 The "h" is silent in French and the "ï" in "Haïti" has a diacritical mark used to show that the second vowel is pronounced separately, as in the word "naïve".In English, this rule for the pronunciation is often disregarded, thus the spelling "Haiti" is used.There are different anglicizations for its pronunciation such as "HIGH-ti", "high-EE-ti" and "haa-EE-ti", which are still in use, but "HAY-ti" is the most widespread and best-established.