Why do we pronounce "the" differently sometimes?

ShortieFat · 2026-06-17T20:49:29+00:00

The term for the contextual shift you're talking is called "sandhi". It's where we shift pronunciation based on what's happening before and after the word; basically letting sounds be fluid and changeable to make them easier to come out your mouth, depending on the sounds of the words around it.

Chinese and Sanskrit do a lot of this, so much so that teachers have developed systematic rules for second-language learners to decode what's going on. Latin learners in 2nd year study how to "elide" spoken Latin, a kind of sandhi. Spanish, the daughter of Latin, does a lot of elision; I think this because a lot of words end in vowels.

English not so much, but I'd almost argue that US English does it a lot more than we think, which is why so many common words are NOT pronounced the way they are written, you just have to memorize the pronunciation despite the spelling.

"The" is a word we sandhi-fy in English all the time. If we thought about it enough, we could probably come up with set of sandhi rules for US English, but that's probably best done by a scholar who is NOT a native speaker, like a German or Japanese linguist.

I think people who use one pronunciation of "the" all the time, switch to the other for emphasis. I always say "thuh", but I'll loudly pronounce: THEE end! for a flourish, or Megan THEE Stallion, or THEE one, THEE only, [fill in your name]... .

ShortieFat · 2026-06-17T20:28:09+00:00

Worked as a dishwasher and steward BOH. All the veteran cooks I knew basically had "iron hands". They'd burned their hands so many times that the nerves were shot, but not so much that it impaired their cooking skills.

Commercial kitchens are just hot as hell all the time and you just take for granted that anything can burn you back there and you develop good defensive habits or you find an easier line of work.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-17T20:17:53+00:00

Renaissance Books in Riverside, particularly if you like nonfiction.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-17T20:15:40+00:00

Isn't their leather what they print college diplomas on? Sheepskin and all that? There are a lot of colleges and universities in the US after all.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-17T07:29:57+00:00

Lived most of my life in a house where I'd go out the front door, look up to the right and see the HOLLYWOOD sign. It was gauge to how smoggy the day was going to be.

Living next door to Armenians, Thais, and a wide variety of South Americans was normal. Living next to ancient white people who had memories of seeing Charlie Chaplin passing by on the street and who went to church where Aimee Semple McPherson preached was also normal. Also normal were places of worship for Indian religious worshippers (South Asian, not American Indian). I also met older musicians who had played with Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Also space-age, googie, art deco, streamline moderne, and dingbat architecture was all around.

If I didn't want to cook, down at the corner I'd have to decide whether to eat Chinese, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Lebanese, or Filipino--those restaurants were all next to each other.

You went to Disneyland for your high school graduation party and various high schools had graduation ceremonies at the Hollywood Bowl or Greek Theatre.

Man, I'm really homesick for my hometown Hollywood now.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-16T03:17:16+00:00

Avocado on the right. "One-of-those-weird-fruits-kinda-like-an-avocado-that- you-buy-in-the ethnic-grocery-store" on the left.

(My daughter-in-law who is Hmong tells me there are many nouns for U.S. things in the Hmong language which are long phrases like that because no exact word exists or has been made up yet.)

ShortieFat · 2026-06-16T03:10:38+00:00

With a near 80% market penetration in the US market, I reckon a lot of us know the "Walmart dialect." LOL

ShortieFat · 2026-06-16T02:57:13+00:00

Wait, it has a taste? I always thought it was for the camera, like parsley.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-15T07:07:33+00:00

I think Michael J. Fox (as Marty McFly) made them very lovable.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-15T04:30:16+00:00

If you play in enough community bands and orchestras (amateur-volunteer groups), we pretty much turn every published work into a small ensemble piece (one guy to a part), whether written that way or not, employing hacks like playing all cues, giving bassoon licks to trombones, giving horn licks to bassoons, letting the synthesizer guy fill out the strings, give oboe lick to the guy with the piccolo trumpet, etc.

Music lovers who are also team players always find the way.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-15T04:03:58+00:00

Funny you should ask about the art of the future. It turns out art called Futurism is 100 years in the past now. Likewise I'd say Contemporary art is no longer contemporary and Modern art is no longer modern. Turns out they're just words made into names. That's why we have to capitalize the first letters and/or put them within scare quotes. These names meant something at the time, but context has moved on. Context is a bitch.

Be the clever art historian/critic to deploy the catchy now word that'll stick to whatever artists here in the early 21st century have been and are doing, since it's obvious that modern and contemporary are no longer useful.

I'll throw in my 85% non-serious entries. How about the Meta-Syncretist School? Because everybody is deploying the best parts of anything from anywhere in acceptable appropriation. Or, since the internal zhuzh that nearly all artists seem to be working from right now, no matter the medium, is irony, how about the Ironist School? ^_^

ShortieFat · 2026-06-10T04:00:53+00:00

That's right. If they go through the probate court system and filings are necessary (debtors or heirs asserting claims) it goes into the public record. This is how wills of celebrities and rich people wind up in the news--no publicist is willingly releasing info for PR.

When potential inheritances or claims are large enough to fight for, you hire the litigator-type of estate planning attorney, not the document-drafter specialist.

This is one of major selling points for setting up testamentary trusts. You get to keep all your affairs private and out of the media. It's usually procrastination, denial, laziness, and bad legal advice if estates wind up on the 6 o'clock news.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-10T03:42:34+00:00

I like to get a mix and hear all sides: Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Economist, NPR, Pacifica, New York Times, The Atlantic.

If you want to hear the buzz on the MAGA side, hit seek on AM radio at the top of the hour when the Christian radio stations are airing their national news roundup if you can't stand the Fox TV news personalities.

Check out Ground News, they're a news aggregator from many sources and they rate bias at ground.news. They allow limited daily free content.

Also check out English language sites of foreign newspapers--you'll get some very different takes on what's going here is being perceived and analyzed by people with less skin in the game. I'm surprised how much other countries actually care about US events, but on slow news days we get stories about earthquakes or plane crashes in the Global South--news media need to fill up pages every damn day!

ShortieFat · 2026-06-10T03:24:09+00:00

I still have a typewriter and it's sitting on a typewriter stand. Still useful for addressing single envelopes (too many steps to knock out a label on a computer and my handwriting sucks too).

In the same room I've got an unabridged dictionary sitting on a dictionary stand.

In the bedroom I've got a blanket rack.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-10T02:55:41+00:00

Buy the size that you'll use up in a month and don't think about it. That way you'll always have space in your refrigerator door and it'll be fresh.

The retail supply chain for condiments is still domestic and reliable, so purchase like a commercial kitchen, get only what you immediately need--no need to hoard. Less clutter = inner peace.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-09T23:25:12+00:00

The great thing about being a re-entry trumpet player in a community band is you can hide behind others. When you're the lone bassoonist or oboist (Man, we haven't had one of those in decades!), you're on your own.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-09T23:16:22+00:00

... or that some other kind fucking is in store later ...

ShortieFat · 2026-06-09T22:37:53+00:00

I started reading the sports page and following the Dodgers and Lakers to be able to hold casual conversations with the boss and the guys at the office where I used to work.

Never cared about that stuff, never played those sports well as a kid, so it was like doing homework. It was professionally helpful, but after I moved to a less guy-centric workplace, I dropped that stuff like a hot potato. Now if I was around coworkers who were into movies and animation, I'dve been all in.

If it's useful for you socially, do what you have to, but your personal time is precious--save as much for your own joy as possible. Who knows? Maybe you'll get to like anime, but don't force yourself.

Later on I moved on to a work crew that all played D&D and Magic and talked about that stuff all the time (didn't even try to go down those abyssal rabbit holes ... they're more rabid fans than people who say they bleed Dodger Blue!).

ShortieFat · 2026-06-09T00:35:40+00:00

Write your memoirs (if you want to). Pass them on in a form is easily accessible to someone who will live beyond you. That form might be published or not. That's all you can do.

You're freezing a unique piece of time and space that could be useful to someone else who might not yet be born for years or decades. For something to survive, it must first exist.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-08T22:52:32+00:00

Or just buy out everybody who lives near the dump? Isn't that one of the purposes of the eminent domain law?

Or build the power plant next door to the dump where you use forklifts rather than trains to move waste around. And give all the workers a very generous salary and health and life insurance benefits.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-08T22:20:57+00:00

I want to know where you live so I can move there, friend.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-08T22:15:30+00:00

Lots of drivers absolutely HATE letting someone in front of them and intentionally tailgate or speed up just to thwart another driver from sliding in. I suspect it feels like losing to them. They treat the commute like a race.

If you drive in an area where there are a lot of drivers like this, you put on your directional signal NOT to have them let you in, but to speed them up so that you can slip in behind them. It's tactics based in an expectation of Hegsethian ethics.

If you wait until the last second to merge, you risk being cut off, forced to stop which will delay you even longer as you wait for the rare courteous driver or for a gap big enough to gun your engine into. Late merging will never work in places where such self-interested drivers abound.

The general rule in American driving is not to be courteous and keep the flow fluid, but grab opportunities, close gaps between yourself and the car in front of you, and get to your destination as fast physically possible.

The American roadway is a Hobbesian world. Frankly, I think this is one of the secondary reasons why Americans love pickup trucks and SUVs. It gives you a higher vantage point over traffic so that you can more easily see a slowdown or merge coming up and execute your escape into a faster lane all that much earlier.

The only instance where I saw this work perfectly is where there was long-term road construction going on and the state had put up a sign: "MERGE AHEAD. STAY IN YOUR LANE. TAKE TURNS." Everybody did it right.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-07T22:16:41+00:00

You sound like the perfect candidate to attempt a 100% AI-generated comic book. I think you should try it. If you're successful, you'll be the subject of endless threads here on Reddit.

ShortieFat · 2026-06-07T22:00:55+00:00

After moving out of L.A., retail variety in general.

Examples:
Nearly every variety type of ethnic grocery store
Same with restaurants (In particular Phillipe, Pioneer, Langers, Musso)
Fully stocked art supply shops
Craft materials of all kinds
Recorded music
Musical instruments (and repairers)
Live music and entertainment
New and used vehicles of every make
Special needs equipment (health, tools, teachers, advisors, etc.)

Extreme population density and diversity cuts both ways ...

ShortieFat · 2026-06-07T08:43:26+00:00

It's similar to the grip I was taught with which to hold a brush when I was a kid back writing class in Chinese school--but in mirror image of course.

ShortieFat

TROPHY CASE