this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
148 points (93.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26980 readers
1349 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Limfjorden@feddit.dk 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"The" does have two pronunciations depending on if the word after it starts with a vovel sound or not. It's "Thuh" for consonants and "Thee" for vowels.

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

No it's not... it's purely emphasis/stress via vowel reduction in English?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_and_vowel_reduction_in_English

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It's both things, and subjected to wide variation:

  • Stressed Unstressed
    Prevocalic /ði:/ /ði/, /ðɪ/, /ð/
    Preconsonantal /ði:/, /ðʌ/ /ðə/

Source for those pronunciations, Wiktionary.

To complicate it further some varieties merge /ʌ/ and /ə/, or /ɪ/ and /ə/. And I'm not even taking into account varieties using a different consonant, /t θ d f v/.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago

Ohh nice, that table helps. I felt like something was off about people sometimes using more /ði:/ than what I was taught!

[–] Limfjorden@feddit.dk 1 points 1 month ago

I'm just going off what I learned in school in Denmark. According to lvxferre@mander.xyz it seems there is a lot more variation than I thought.

[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Please, i don't want to be self aware of my accent in my first language.

Also the two pronunciations of "the" noted above are different mouth shapes. "Uh" un butt versus "ee" in jeep.