A silly question about /ðə/ in a sentence

[dorothyrowe]

Hello there,
in a sentence (just a random sentence to illustrate the problem) 'Don't you change the things you do' one should pronounce 'the' as /ðə/ or /ə/? I find it really hard to say /ðə/ just after 'change' without any pause.

 

[BobK]

Practise more, then!

(Without the /ð/ you would be saying 'a', which wouldn't make sense.)

b

 

[dorothyrowe]

Oh, thank you, I'm not sure why but i assumed that native speakers tended to shorten /ðə/ into /ə/, i guess my listening skills are kinda... well, lame. Anyway, thank you for clarifying the issue. I will practise more

 

[noofin]

I'm an ESL speaker, but from my experience I can share this little tip with you.

In this particular sentence ' Don't you change the things you do '

as you pronounce 'the', your tongue should move either behind the top teeth or in between front teeth, then what I do in this example is, after pronouncing 'the' my tongue stays in that position, either behind top teeth or in between front teeth, and without pulling it back into your mouth you immediately make the next "th" sound for the word "things".


Could any native English speaker confirm this?

 

[BobK]

:up: You're quite right. A lot of EFL/ESOL students have trouble with consonant clusters because they try to make their tongue go back to some kind of 'starting position' in between one consonant and the next. ;-)

b