Pronunciation of articles in English

[Lionel Mandrake]

9. Interesting but cryptic, as always.

Let me see if I have this straight. Schwa is that upside down e character which represents the (non-high front vowel) vowel sound in "uh" or "um". The vowel in "thee" is /i/, which is a high front vowel. Hiatus is two adjacent vowels that don't form a diphthong. Hiatus bothers you most if the two vowel sounds are similar, i.e., both high front or neither high front. Did I get all that right?

I'm confused by your example: "no, not the 6 pm newscast, but the HOURly newscast." Do you say "thuh HOURly ..." or "thee HOURly ..."? In this example you have "the" before a stressed vowel. The title of your post suggests "thee", but you say that the schwa is back and anything else sounds weird.

I suppose there are geographical variations, and maybe individual variations in the vowel sounds of "the" in context. In the past there were masters of "elocution" who taught that unaccented vowels should avoid the tendency toward schwa. That was like trying to push back the tide, but it may have had some residual effect.