=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=91Baluchistan'_mispronounced_(n?=

One of the many elements in the rich stew of socio-historical interest that is David Lean's ?Brief Encounter' (set in the winter of 1938-9) is the fact that the husband of the would-be adulteress (Celia Johnson) ? apparently a member of the professional middle class ? should be unaware of the correct pronunciation of ?Baluchistan'. He pronounces the ?ch' as a hard ?c'.
Baluchistan (next door to Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province) at that time was a region which included a province of British India (ie, territory ruled directly by the Viceroy in New Delhi ? though subject to limited provincial autonomy under the Government of India Act 1935) and various native states (ruled by Indian princes under the aegis of that bizarre institution, British paramountcy).
A particular reason why the name might have been familiar at that time was the fact that, on May 31 1935, the chief town in the region, Quetta, had suffered a devastating earthquake (1).

The form of the mispronunciation is even more peculiar: the only language I am aware of in which ?ch' is pronounced as a hard ?c' is Italian!
Stranger still that I was long under a similar misapprehension about the pronunciation of ?Bechuanaland' (former British colony, now Botswana ? best known under its former name as the site for the Seretse Khama/Ruth Williams imbroglio in the couple of years around
1950).

In both cases, the correct pronunciation of the ?ch' is the English one. Logical, perhaps, given that the words were created in English?.
(1) http://www.asc-india.org/gq/quetta.htm