American English Phonetics

7.2 Gradation of articles

The gradation words of GA are presented in tables: the second column gives the SF, the third the WF, and the fourth column gives an illustration of the use of the WF.

	Strong Form	Weak Form	Example
a	eɪ	ə	a book
an	æn	ən	an ordeal
the	ðiː	ðə Before V: ði	the milk the oil

The SFs of the articles occur when they are accented, as in He is ˈthe /ðiː/ man for the job. Note, however, that /ðə/ may be the accented form of the as in I said ˈthe /ðə/ or /ˈðiː/ book, not a /eɪ/ book.
Some varieties use /ðə/ regardless of the following phoneme: the eagle: [ðə ʔːgl].