How to Pronounce THE - American English Pronunciation - American Accent

THE - A small word that can cause trouble and confusion. Do you have trouble saying this word? Is it hard to pronounce THE? Let me help you. I am an experienced English teacher. I can help you pronounce the word THE correctly. To donate, please go to https://paypal.me/coopos?locale.x=en_US Confusing English Words    • Pronounce Difficult and Confusing English ...   Word Practice    • English Pronunciation Practice - Word List...   English Vowels    • English Vowels - American English Pronunci...   English Consonants    • English Consonants - American English Pron...   Recommended Dictionaries are below Online Dictionaries The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ Cambridge Dictionary https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/ Collins Dictionary https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dic... Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary http://learnersdictionary.com/ Paper Dictionaries – Beginning to High-Intermediate Merriam-Webster's Essential Learner's English Dictionary USA https://amzn.to/2EIbtjc Longman Dictionary of American English USA https://amzn.to/2UiVmOz Paper Dictionaries – High-Intermediate to Advanced Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary USA https://amzn.to/2SGabt0 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English USA https://amzn.to/2EvRcvX As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. TRANSCRIPT: Hi. I'm Denise. Thank you for watching my video. Today I'm going to talk about how to pronounce the word the. This word has two pronunciations and they are /ðə/ and /ði/. Many Americans pronounce this word as /ðə/ all or most of the time but others pronounce them in different cases, okay. So I will talk about that. I will talk about how to pronounce each of these. I will give you several examples here on the board and a little later I'll also give you some sentences to practice with me and then a couple of questions I will ask of you at the end, okay. Thank you very much for watching this video. I'm really happy that you came. I hope that this video will be very useful to you. Also, please remember to like this video and to subscribe to my channel. And please consider donating, also. There is a link in the description box that you can use if you'd like to make a donation, okay. All right. Now let me begin by talking about the actual pronunciation. Both pronunciations start, they have the same T-H sound which is this /ð/ /ð/. It's hard to make it without continuing it with another sound like the vowel. But they both start with the same sound for the letters T-H. This is the voiced T-H sound. To make it we just very lightly put the tip of our tongue, so the tip is the very end, the tip of the tongue between the upper and lower teeth. The teeth are not together. You don't bite on your tongue. But the tongue does very lightly touch the bottom of the upper teeth, okay. The tongue usually protrudes a little bit, just a very small amount, maybe three millimeters or even less. It's not an exact amount, okay. But it protrudes a little bit. So it's between the teeth but the bottom teeth are not really touching the tongue. Just the tongue touches lightly on the bottom of the upper teeth or sometimes just behind the bottom of the upper teeth. Then we release air over the surface of the tongue between the tongue and the teeth. And as I move into the next sound or even to make this sound I release my tongue. Okay. So just lightly touch the bottom of your teeth. Then so that sound is the same for both pronunciations. The difference is in the vowel sound. This vowel sound is the schwa sound. It's /ə/ /ə/. This vowel sound is /i/ /i/. So this sound /ə/ is the same vowel sound as in the word but. So the pronunciation here then for this word would be is /ðə/ /ðə/ /ə/. The vowel again is the same as in but, /bə/ /ə/ /ðə/ /ə/, okay. The vowel sound here, the /i/, is the same vowel sound as in the word see, okay, see /i/. So in this case this word is pronounced /ði/, okay. So we have /ðə/ /ði/ /ðə/ /ði/, okay. So the T-H is the same. The vowel sounds are different, /ðə/ as in but or /ði/ as in see. Okay. As I said, many Americans use this pronunciation /ðə/ all or most of the time. But there is a general rule which says that this pronunciation /ðə/ is used before before a word beginning with a consonant sound, okay. And this pronunciation is used before a word beginning with a vowel sound. Now I want to clarify that I'm talking about sounds not letters. If we look here each word following the word the begins with a consonant sound. I have