From the Pokémon Go thread...
Quote Originally Posted by laproblematique View Post
I think you're in the vast minority of westerners if you've been pronouncing it pockemon all this time for the past 20 years. Never heard anybody say that, not sure if you're even serious.
It is a portmanteau of the words "Pocket Monsters." Pocket is pronounced "pock-et" (/ˈpɒk.ɪt/) in English (rhyming with docket and rocket), not "poke-it." Here is the original opening theme song for Pokémon. You can clearly here that it's pronounced "Pock-eh-mon," and not "Poke-ee-mon." Whoever officially transcribed the English title even placed an accent mark above the "e" to tell people where to place the stress on the word (which is very important because English, unlike Japanese, is a stressed☆ language). The accented é is the reason why we don't pronounce café as "kaffer" or résumé as "resume" (as in "resume your positions"), or touché as "touchy" etc.

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☆Although English is among few European languages which infrequently uses accent marks to tell you where to place the stress on words. I feel sorry for learners of English who must find it difficult where to place the stress on words like "extract" when it's a noun ("I read the extract") or a verb ("extract the information") etc. Whoever transliterated Pokémon has deliberately placed an accent mark on top of the "e" to explicitly avoid this confusion, so the evidence is right there above the "e."