[momofnicholas]

The is just pronounced thuh not thee. Thee is a whole different word. It does not matter if the next word after "the" is a vowel or a consonant, you still say Thuh. Nowadays in English we rarely use the word thee, it normally represents a person. It was used a lot in the Shakespeare novels. You could say: Did he give thee the book? but we do not speak like this anymore.