This story is about two brothers, The (thuh) and The (thee). Even though they are poles apart, they are quite often misunderstood and abused by humans and God’s alike. Let’s know them better. The correct pronunciation of The (thuh) and The (thee).
The (thuh) is used before consonant sounds.
The (thee) is used before vowel sounds.
Don’t fret (be afraid), I’ll explain with an example.
Let’s consider the following sentence,
Usually, I get up and get the newspaper, it’s The Times of India but for the last few days I have been picking up The Economic Times.
In the sentence above, the first the has a consonant sound (newspaper) following it, so it should sound like thuh newspaper.
When you say, The Times of India, you should pronounce it as Thuh Times of India. This is because of the consonant sound (times) following it.
When you say, The Economic Times, you should pronounce it as Thee Economic Times. This is because of the vowel sounds (economic) following it.
But, there is always an exception,
in a conversation, if you wish to stress on a word after the, then you may use thee ignoring the sound that follows. Let’s look at our previous example, here it’s not wrong to call Thee Times of India instead of Thuh Times of India.
So, it was finally decided and all the Gods and beasts rejoiced at the revelation.
Thuh – before a consonant and
Thee – before a vowel.
Finally, the brothers thuh and thee came to rest but no one could tell who was the one.
A quick question, in the last sentence how would you pronounce the one?
thuh one or thee one. A hint, one starts with a consonant sound. Please comment and let me know your answer.
Readers may actively comment below to clarify doubts.
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