Phonograms and the word "the"

[mom2three]

When you teach using phonograms, how do you explain the word "the?" Why doesn't it say "th--ee"?

[HomeAgain]

In our house, it does.  Human nature slurs the ending and makes it 'thuh', but it gets its true sound back before vowels and when over-emphasized for meaning.

[forty-two]

It does say "th-ee" before a vowel (the apple, the elephant), and I just teach my beginning readers to read it "th--ee" everywhere.  My oldest, once she became a fluent reader, had no trouble automatically reading it as "th-uh" when that's how she'd normally say it.  There's been other words where vowels getting schwa'd has caused her trouble, but not "the".  (Talking about how English sometimes mushes vowel sounds in non-accented syllables into a generic "uh" is how I'd explain teaching "the" as "th-uh".)

Edited March 30, 2016 by forty-two

[FO4UR]

When you teach using phonograms, how do you explain the word "the?" Why doesn't it say "th--ee"?

 

Sometimes we do say "thee."  When the next word in the sentence begins with a vowel, it is "thee earth" and "the sky,"  "thee apple" and "the banana."

 

Common pronuctiations change over time and through different places in the world.  When my kids were learning to read, we were midwesterners living in the south.  It was a very simple explanation.  When we visit grandma people say things one way, and at home they say things this way. 

 

 

I don't get into the shwa with little kids, but I do carry out the "It's just the way people have changed the pronunciations over time."  We say ______, but when we spell it we should think ________.

[Paige]

We use long-e the often enough that it never caused my kids a second of confusion. It says th-ee; and we say th-uh sometimes because we are sloppy. 

[Ellie]

When you teach using phonograms, how do you explain the word "the?" Why doesn't it say "th--ee"?

 

There are two things here: the pronunciation of the phonogram "th" and the pronunciation of the word "the." :-)

 

The word "the" is in the first 30 words Spalding teaches. We teach it as two phonograms, th and e. It follows Rule 4, which is that vowels may say their second (or "long") sounds at the end of a short word or syllable (it also uses the second sound of /th/). We briefly comment that sometimes it does sound like "thu," but we don't make a big deal out of it. We are teaching children to think to spell.

[Targhee]

When you teach using phonograms, how do you explain the word "the?" Why doesn't it say "th--ee"?

It does at our house. At least for spelling. I point out times we use "thee" like in The End or when using superlatives like "the best," and explain how we got lazy with how it is said. Remember thE correct way to pronounce it when you are spelling (open syllable ending in e and vowel says its long sound).

[Kristie in Florida]

I had no idea it sounded like thee in front of a word beginning with a vowel.

[Laura Corin]

Hobbes: 'thee'

Me: Yes, you're right, it looks like 'thee' but we mostly say that 'thuh'

Hobbes: Oh, okay

[mom2three]

Thank you everyone for your replies. Now it makes more sense to me. I am learning so much from these phonograms!!

[FO4UR]

I had no idea it sounded like thee in front of a word beginning with a vowel.

 

That may be a thing regional to you.

 

I have taken years of voice lessons, and the diction lessons that go along with the voice lessons.  I probably think too deeply about these matters. Ha!

 

It should say _____, but we pronounce it _____. 

 

 

Why?  Because English is wierd.

 

Because English is like the little kid who never did follow any of their own rules.  "I'm feeling like a shwa today..." :lol: