The

I see I've been a bit lazy. I didn't add anything to this blog in the first 2 months of 2010. Oh well. 

One of my friends asked me how to decide which way to pronounce "the". Sometimes it sounds like the beginning of "these"; at other times it's more like "thus". Here's an easy way to decide: 

1) If the next word after "the" starts with a vowel sound (a,e,i,o,u), you pronounce "the" with the long "e" sound in "these". 

2) If the next word starts with a consonant sound, "the" sounds like the beginning of "thus". 

Notice I said vowel "sound" and consonant "sound". Sometimes English is tricky because some words have silent letters. For example, the word "herb" is pronounced as though the "h" weren't there. It's spelled with a consonant at the beginning, but it's pronounced as though it started with a vowel. So you would use #1 above, not #2. That's the (#1) end of the (#2) story. 

Don't forget to stick out your tongue when you say "the"--whichever one you use!