Thread

1. Dwedit · 1789883192 · focus · HN ↗

   There's also "the" vs "the". As in "the boy ate the apple". First 'the' ends with a schwa sound. Second 'the' ends with 'ee' sound.

   1. Ylpertnodi · 1789884359 · focus · HN ↗

      British English speaker: for me, the two 'e's' have the same sound.

      The boy The apple.

      Though I do say 'thee end'

      My Brother says 'barth', I say 'bath'.

      1. IshKebab · 1789888451 · focus · HN ↗

         Also native British. I would say "thee apple" would be by far the more common pronunciation in op's example but I probably wouldn't blink if someone said "thuh apple".
   2. hrnnnnnn · 1789886909 · focus · HN ↗

      Both schwa for me, native speaker who grew up in Scotland.

      1. kentosi · 1789932823 · focus · HN ↗

         Australian native speaker here. Only the first "the" is a schwa for me.

         Must be tied to how we both pronounce the first "a" in apple differently.

   3. IanCal · 1789888390 · focus · HN ↗

      Both schwa for me unless I was trying to draw particular attention to the apple and denote it was rather significant.
   4. globular-toast · 1789888954 · focus · HN ↗

      Yeah, these are different for me as a southern Englishman. Languages generally try to avoid glottal stops. French has a lovely system called liaison where a consonant sound will appear to separate two consecutive vowels. In English we like diphthongs so I guess we use this similarly to liaison. Some accents just use glottal stops, though, nay bother.
   5. mathieuh · 1789897426 · focus · HN ↗

      It’s actually something that is changing in English right now. In some languages like German all word-initial vowel sounds are pronounced with a glottal stop at the start (a so-called “hard attack”) but English generally doesn’t (or didn’t) do that, resulting in “thee apple”. Younger speakers are starting to use hard attack before word-initial vowel sounds so the “thee” variant isn’t present for them.

      I’m not sure if this also affects “a” vs “an” (i.e. I don’t know if younger people are starting to say e.g. “a apple”) because that obviously makes an orthographical difference so it might be more persistent. Although I suppose they coud say both “an” and begin the next word with a glottal stop.

      Keep an ear out if you’re listening to a younger native English speaker and you might be able to hear it.

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