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 basic rule proclaims that:
The (thuh) is used before consonant sounds.
The (thee) is used before vowel sounds.
Now, don’t fret (be afraid), I’ll explain this 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 (N-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 (T-times) following ‘the’.
When you say, The Economic Times, you should pronounce it as Thee Economic Times. This is because of the vowel sound (E-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 it follows. Thus, in our previous example, it’s not wrong to call Thee Times of India, instead of Thuh Times of India.
So, if you want to stress on ‘Times of India’, then you may say - The(thee) Times of India.
Finally, it was decided; all the Gods and beasts rejoiced at this revelation.
Thuh — before a consonant sound and
Thee — before a vowel sound.
Check yourself
At last, the dispute between thuh and thee came to rest, but no one could tell who was the one.
In the last sentence, how would you pronounce ‘the one’?
Is it thuh one or thee one.
Answers
The word ‘one’ starts with a consonant sound. Even though the spelling starts with a vowel letter (O-one), the sound is of a consonant — W(one — won), so th answer should be thuh one.
Moving on, whenever you get confused with Thuh and thee, listen carefully and figure out if the sound is a consonant sound or a vowel sound.
Readers may actively comment below to clarify doubts.
Angel Joseph.
We are a language training school located in Kochi Ernakulam. We provide IELTS classes in Kochi and also online Live classes for the same. Each candidate is handled personally and trained by Angel Joseph and Justus Joseph.
