Is this weird?

[Chocolatefrogs]

One of my relatives was talking about Pakistan the other other day, and pronounced it as ‘Par-Kiss-Than’. Is this a strange pronunciation? I’m curious.

I've never heard it pronounced like thatq

Yes I’ve heard that before but it’s not a pronunciation I hear often.

Me neither! That’s what got me wondering. I pronounce it as ‘Pah-kiss-tarn’.

I have never heard it pronounced with a “th” sound in the final syllable. Very odd.

I suppose with some accents it will sound like that.
My (slightly snobby) Aunt says Kenya as "Keen-ya" but I've mostly heard it said "Ken-ya".
Same with some people say Caribbean as
"Ca-ra-bee-en" some as "Ca-rib-ee-en".
It's just accents.

I pronounce it Pak-iss-stan. I've heard it both the first and your pronunciation.

That's fairly close to the actual/native pronunciation of Pakistan (something like Paah-Kiss-Thaan with the Th sound not sounding like the English Th sound but like a duller sound with the tongue inside the top teeth, if that makes sense!)

(A Pakistani)

Aatif Nawaz (British-Pakistani comedian and occasional cricket commentator) pronounces it so that it almost sounds like "Bargisdarn".

That’s what I thought as well. I find it strange because my relative is a white Scottish woman and she’s never lived in or visited Pakistan, so it’s not as if she’s picked up how someone who’s actually from Pakistan would pronounce it and then wanted to repeat that pronunciation to be authentic, out of respect.

Maybe she heard it from someone in RL or online or on TV or something?

I watch Al Jazeera news online sometimes and notice different pronunciations.

Mishal Hussein on the Today programme always uses correct pronunciations for places in that part of the world, so it is heard widely. Your friend must have picked it up and considers it polite to use the local pronunciation.

Keen-ya is the Colonial pronunciation. It's how my FIL (who was born there) pronounces it. He also says zeeebra rather than zebra.

My relative doesn’t listen to Radio 4, so I’m not sure where she’s picked it up from. She doesn’t listen to or watch the BBC because she doesn’t agree with their views.