Of course there are still major mysteries that the Korean teachers will ask us explanations for, but we have none. Like how you can be ON a football field, but IN a regular field. Or ON an island but IN a country. I love it when these minute little problems come up. It makes me feel really lucky English is my native tongue and I'm not having to learn it.
Then, one day, my boss asked me, "Emily when do you use thE and when do you use thUH?" My answer: whenever you like. I use thE when I want to put emphasis on something and thUH pretty much every other time. I thought.
Turns out I was WRONG! Much like A and AN there is actually a time and place to use thE and thUH. (not the same for A and Auh though. . .)
there's a special pronunciation rule about the word the that is similar to the rule about when to use a and an: The is pronounced “thuh” when it comes before a word that starts with a consonant sound, and it's pronounced “thee” when it comes before a word that starts with a vowel sound. It can also be pronounced “thee” for emphasis (2), for example if you wanted to say, “Twitter is the [pronounced “thee”] hot social networking tool.” I actually have trouble remembering this rule and have to make special marks in my transcripts to remind myself to get the pronunciation right, so I apologize if I mess it up sometimes. I think I must have missed the day they covered this in school, and I've never recovered. -- Grammar Girl
She's definitely not the only person who missed that day in school. I'd never in my life heard of such a thing until coming here and according to all of the foreigners I've asked about it, neither have they. I tell the Korean teachers that it's not really that big of a deal, but they still insist on correcting us and making us feel like big English dummies.
In short
Vowel sound : thE
Consonant sound: thUH
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