Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my channel Sparkle English where I teach you how to improve
your level of English. In today's lesson, I'm going to teach you how to pronounce the word
the. There are two different ways to pronounce the. Sometimes we say "thee" and sometimes
we say "thuh." I'm going to teach you the three different rules. So you will know when to say the,
and when to say thee. Rule number one: we pronounce a the with a short sound when the
comes before a consonant sound. For example, the baby, the computer, the table, the child.
Baby, computer, table, and child all begin with consonant sounds. So we pronounce the with a
short sound. However, when the comes before a vowel sound, we pronounce it as a long thee.
For example, the octopus, the apple, the umbrella, the egg. Octopus, apple, umbrella,
and egg all begin with vowel sounds. So we pronounce thee with a long sound. We don't say
the egg because it doesn't flow very well. Listen to how I pronounce these two sentences.
Where are the eggs? That sounds a bit awkward. Where are the eggs? This flows more naturally.
The third rule for pronouncing the is that when we want to place emphasis on a particular word,
we can use emphatic the or thee whether or not the following word begins with a consonant or
vowel sound. For example, I could say I had the best time last night. Normally,
we would say the before best because best begins with a consonant sound:
b-best. However, if I want to emphasize the word best, because it was a really good time,
I could say I had the best time last night. In the second example, I am using the emphatic the
to emphasize the word best. So you can use "thee" for emphasis on words beginning with
either consonants or vowels. So now we are going to review these rules again
quickly and look at some complicated examples. And then we will do an eight question quiz.
We say the with a short sound, when the comes before a word that begins with a consonant sound.
For example, she'll have the chocolate cake. We say that because the next word
begins with a consonant sound: ch. We say thee with a long sound when the comes before a word
that begins with a vowel sound. I'll have the ice cream. Ice cream begins with a vowel sound i,
so we say "thee." So here are some more examples of words that begin with
vowel sounds. We would write this as the apple, but we pronounce it the apple, the elephant,
the ice, the office, the umbrella, because all of these words begin with a vowel sound.
And here are some examples of words that begin with consonant sounds. The banana,
the dog, the kite, the television, the water. Now be careful to pay attention
to the sound of the word. For example: The house. House begins with a consonant sound,
h-house, however, we would say "thee" hour because the h in hour is silent. And it begins
with a vowel sound -ow. So we say the hour, the house, the hour. Here's another example.
Even though u is a vowel, in university, it sounds like it begins with a y. So we say the university
however, we would say, the umbrella, because umbrella begins with a vowel sound, and university
begins with a "yuh" a consonant sound. Another example, the European. European begins with an E,
which is a vowel, but it begins with a consonant sound. The European. However, entrance begins
with an E, which is a vowel sound. So we say, the entrance. So now we're going to do a pronunciation
quiz. We have eight different sentences, and you need to listen to the words that come
after the and decide if we say the, or thee. So let's begin. I'm going to store to buy eggs.
Now this word here is store. So do you think it would be the store or the store?
Because store begins with a consonant sound, it would be the. I'm going to thus store to buy...
eggs begins with a vowel sound. So we pronounce the eggs. I'm going to the store to buy the eggs.
Number two. Can I have chocolate cake, please? And the answer.. Can I have the
chocolate cake please? Chocolate begins with a consonant sound ch. So we say the chocolate.
Number three. American guy is really cute. Okay, for this one American guy. This begins with a
vowel sound. So we say the. The American guy is really cute. Number four, umbrella is in closet.
Now in the first one, we would say the umbrella. Because umbrella begins with a vowel sound.
The umbrella is in the closet. Because closet begins with a consonant sound. Number five.
She's going to meeting in an hour.
We would say she's going to the meeting in an hour. Because meeting begins with M- consonant
sound. Number six, did you get award. In this one, award begins with a vowel sound.
So we say the award. Did you get the award? Number seven. University has a great swim team.
In this example, university begins with a vowel but it begins with a consonant sound. University.
So we say the university, not the university. The university
has a great swim team. And finally, number eight. It's end of day. End begins with a vowel sound.
So we say it's the end of the day. Because day begins with a consonant sound.
I want you to listen and repeat the sentence. It's the end of the day. It's the end of the day.
And you can see that many times we have sentences like this
with both "thee" and "thuh" in the same sentence. Okay, I want you to let me know how many you got
correct out of eight for this pronunciation quiz on the or the. Thank you guys very much
for watching. If you like this video, please click like and make sure to subscribe to Sparkle English
for more videos on how to improve your level of English. I will see you in my next lesson.