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In this American English pronunciation video, we're going to talk about how to reduce and
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link the word 'to' and 'the' together, in a sentence, like this: to the.
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I've spent quite a bit of time in my videos talking about reduction and linking. And today,
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I want to take the specific case of linking the words 'to' and 'the', and talk about how
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to simplify the mouth movement when we're reducing these words, linking them, and making
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them very, very fast.
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The first thing I want to point out, is that there doesn't have to be any movement in the
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lips or the jaw: we can articulate this with just the tongue. To the. So, what are we doing
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here. The word 'to' will reduce to either the true T-schwa sound, or the flap T-schwa
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sound. But for both of them, the tongue position will be the same. So the tongue tip is up
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at the roof of the mouth, tt, tt, tt, with the jaw quite closed and the teeth pretty
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much together: tt, tt, dd, dd. And I can make that sound just by moving the tongue, the
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jaw doesn't have to move: tt, dd, tt, dd. Now, to make the TH for the word 'the'. I
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do not need to bring the tongue all the way through the teeth. I can just bring it down,
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so it's touching just behind, where the teeth come together. To the. Let's look at this
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up close and in slow motion.
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The word T-H-E is pronounced with the EE vowel when the next word begins with a vowel or
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diphthong. For example, to the other side, to the east. In these cases as well, all the
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articulation will happen with the tongue.
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It will probably take a good bit of time and drilling to get this new way of saying 'to
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the' into your habit. But it is worth doing. Because when we simplify the mouth movement,
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it means it's going to be easier to say it quickly in speech. And when we reduce and
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pronounce these unstressed words very quickly like this, it provides a nice contrast for
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the stressed words, which are much longer, and have a lot more shape. As you drill these
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two words, put them into sentence fragments, and eventually sentences. To the. To the store.
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To the restaurant. I'm going to the restaurant. It will really help you to integrate that
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into your everyday speech.
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That's it, and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.
