Grammar Girl here. I'm Injohn Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language.

Today we're going to talk about how to pronounce a little word you probably use hundreds of times a day.

And then we look at why the Latin language died.

Did you know that even though we always spell the word

the same way, there are actually two ways to pronounce it, and the rule that governs which

pronunciation you choose is kind of like how you choose between the words A and Anne. I didn't

know this until I started the Grammar Girl podcast,

and people wrote in to complain that I was doing it wrong.

Then I checked the Merriam-Webster dictionary,

because you'd be amazed how many times people tell me I'm doing something wrong

without checking first that they know what they're talking about.

And lo and behold, this time they were right. There are

pronunciation guidelines that I never learned. At one of my book signings, I talked about this with

the attendees, and a lot of them said they were taught this rule in choir classes. Now, I never

took choir, so maybe that's why I didn't know. Here's the deal.

Pronounce it the if the next word starts with a vowel sound. That's like how you choose the

word an if the next word starts with a vowel sound, the apple and apple. And pronounce it the

if the next word starts with a consonant sound. That's like how you choose

the word A if the next word starts with a consonant sound. The tree, a tree. Just as with A versus

Anne, for thee and the, it's not the first letter of the next word that matters. It's the first sound.

Here are some examples when the next word starts with a consonant sound. Did Ardvark bring the

cheese platter? Where is the universal remote? Note that universal starts with a consonant sound. Why? Yeah,

...