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Re: pronouncing shun
The English word "shun" is pronounced to rhyme with Hun, gun, bun, etc. I have never heard anyone pronounce it like the word "shoe" with an -n added. Are you thinking of a particular person's name? You will have to give more information before this question is understandable.
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well claudias and cleveland,
i met this girl during new years week. and i saw her again a few months later and she told me her name and that she was from japan . and it sound like shawn or sean so i was thinking her naame might be shun. and everyone tells me it's pronounce shoe-n. but i was thinking it was pronounce like sss (like a snake) and then hun. i know the main character in blue dragon is name shu and it sound like sshh (like someone telling you to be quite) and the a ''U''
-Joe:)
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I've never met a Jpns. gal named Shun... usually just guys... Maybe her name was Jun... or maybe she has parents who decided to make up their own name for her... that happens... but yes, the Jpns. "u" is always pronounced "oo" like in boot except when it's used as an extention of an "o" sound or a dipthong.
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Well, you've answered your own question. It's a Japanese name. There is no reason why words or names from Japanese have to be pronounced the same way as a native English word with the same spelling.
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so cleveland
she might of been pronouncing her name how they would pronounce it in english but how you pronounce her name in her native japanese is shoe-n
-Joe:)
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are you sure that the girl is japanese? Shun is a male name, but the pronunciation doesn't match any japanese name I can think of. It might be chinese or korean, at least chinese has a syllable "si" which sounds like the "sss" you discribed.Maybe you can give more examples of similar sounding english words? ^^

This message was edited 8/5/2008, 8:23 PM

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well minikui,
after i saw her the second time i went home and went on behindthename and look up female japanese name and when i saw the name shun i throught that must of been it. i notice everyone else says the name like shoe-n but on street fighter alpha movie ryu's little brother who's name is shun says his name like shawn like she said it. i wonder if you pronounce it two ways or something. well i think it's a unisex name like the chinese version of shun.
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I've never heard the name "Shawn" in Jpns...
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you can listen to the pronunciation at the beginning of this video: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=gjce2rsnofY "Oguri Shun", they say it a few times.There is only one way to pronounce it, but maybe that is what you are looking for ^^
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