Pronunciation of an acronym as a word - C as a stop or a fricative [closed]

At my place of work in the US at an agency, there is an acronym that is fairly well known: FOCI I've noticed some pronounce it "FOSI" (with a sibilant(?) C) and some "FOKI" (with a hard C) with a long O and a long I. (I don't know the proper way to describe these things, sorry)

If it matters, the acronym will expand as: Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence.

Which pronunciation would be more accurate, or better, if either? How would this be determined?

Solution 1:

Unless there's someone who "owns" an acronym (e.g. they coined it, or they are responsible for the documents that authoritatively define it, etc) the "correct" pronunciation is largely determined by how people pronounce it in practice - there are no general rules for this.

On this specific example, note that there is a word "foci" (plural of "focus"), which is most commonly pronounced with a soft C ("foe-sigh"), but sometimes with a hard C ("foe-kie") - this seems to match your experience of how people pronounce the acronym, so it's likely at least some people take their cue from how they pronounce the word.