Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
I listened with interest to the discussion of the proper use of the and thE (long e version) and felt like a dufus since I was not familiar with this rule and for an engineer I consider myself fairly literate. I reviewed the discussion I had heard with my wife, an English graduate, and she indicated she also was not familiar with this as a rule. Further she immediately started to come up with notable exceptions.
1. Columbia gem of the ocean. (I certainly had not heard of Columbia gem of thE ocean)
2. The occupy Wall Street movement. (I don't recall every hearing of ThE occupy Wall Street movement)
Back to the original context I guess I have heard of thE end, but certainly not universally.
I would affirm the "rule" in my use of long E in the pronunciations of "… the ocean" and "the occupy …".
Having said that, rules of euphony tend to shift over time. This practice (not rule) appears to be fading. It might become as obsolete as substituting "mine" for "my" before vowel sounds, much like "a" and "an.". E.g. "Mine eyes have seen the glory …"
[edit: added the following]
youTube of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" as the gem of thE ocean. The choir is consistent in applying this alternation: the red, white …; thE Army.
feature=youtube_gdata_player
Yeah, more like a practice than a rule, and definitely evolving.
But getting back to my original assertion that use of the long E in "the" is more an affectation, I've often observed people using it much like some people use "ahhh" or "uhmm" … in fact, it's often followed by one of those place holders. And conveniently, they both begin with a vowel. I think maybe the psychology is that when you use the long E, something important is about to follow. Same way people use "As a matter of fact …" or "Actually …" or "According to X …"
And the same reasoning would seem to apply to the use of a long A when pronouncing that article.
It seems to me that 'ee' before vowels is just a matter of separating the sounds: "thuh work", "thee apple", "thuh microwave", "thee elephant". And yes, you can say "thee" before other nouns for emphasis, or because you're pausing to think, but I wouldn't call it a conscious affectation; the speaker probably isn't aware of doing it.
Choral singers, on the other hand, are aware of doing it. When they sing, their words are much more long and drawn-out and audiences are likely to notice pronunciations that would pass unremarked in quicker speech; so choral groups practice how they're going to pronounce certain words, and exactly where in a note they'll pronounce the final 's' of a plural noun, and other things that we don't normally think about.
By the way, I would guess that of those people who don't say "thee apple", most use a glottal stop instead. A glottal stop (indicated by /?/ in IPA/ASCII) is when you close your throat briefly between two vowels to stop your voice, as in "uh-uh" (/V? o/). Hear that brief stop between the two syllables? That's a glottal stop; and if you don't say "thee apple" (/Di '&pl/), you probably say "thuh apple" (/DV? '&pl/) with a glottal stop between the words.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)