I'm always curious why sometimes I pronounce the as /ðə/ ("thuh") and sometimes as /ði/ ("thee"). I don't really know what governs this but I expect it's the presence of a vowel at the start of the following word. However, only some vowels. Does anyone have an answer?
I do this too - "thee actual" vs "thuh real" and such. I do expect it's to do with having a vowel sound of a certain kind at the beginning of the next work making you move your tongue in a certain way.
with "the actual" I imagine you're also putting in a kind of intrusive "y" sound so it flows better into the vowel
yep although I don't think it sounds too intrusive. it comes out as theeyactual while the alternative would the thuh.Actual with a sort of micro-accent on the A. I'm sure linguists have names for all these things, like when the movements of the tongue and mouth incidentally form phonemes!
People taught me the a/an rule based on the vowel, but never taught me about this, probably because at school, the emphasis is on grading on the written language.
I just noticed that I do this change in pronunciation without even (and ever) noticing it, which is how I like to approach learning these rules, by pure exposure.
I grew up in New England.
My experience is that "thuh" is basically a lazy / informal pronunciation of that word.
But it's also by far the most common pronunciation. "Thee" would sound strangely hyper-formal, at least in my circles.
Edit: the sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49770609) also rings true to me.
It's similar to a/an, thuh is before a consonant and thee is before a vowel. And thee is also used for emphasis. But some people use a / thuh before a vowel. Do you have an example?
Hmm... I think it might be speed. I'll say "thuh apple" if I'm speaking slowly, and "thee apple" if I'm speaking quickly. Which is strange, because "thee apple" sounds more formal to me, yet it's what I default to only when speaking quickly.
The official rule I learnt in my English (as foreign language) classes is vowel = thee and consonant = thuh. That's it.
But I noticed that native speakers deviate from this at least in two cases:
1. Use thee to emphasize the following noun
2. When searching for the noun to say, they often get it wrong because they say something like "uh, thee, thee, thee, uh, book" and never sweat it.
Source: I watched a lot of Monty Python as a kid and John Cleese does this all the time.
I learned English as a second language and was taught it was thee before vowel sounds and thuh before consonants. Is it wrong?
This is governed by the following word. "Thee" can also be used for emphasis anywhere.
> However, only some vowels
Pretty sure it’s all vowels isn’t it?
“Thee”: apple, evening, island, offer, underpass
“Thus”: any other words where you don’t need to avoid a glottal stop to differentiate the word.
Hmm... I think an /u/ ("oo") triggers "thuh" for me, as in "the ubermensch." But that might just be my idiolect.
I realized long after the edit window expired that autocorrect changed it to “thus”.
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