"The" or "thi" for United States?

[tolad]

:-D Hello, very pleased to be a member. Well! here is my question. Please I would like to know if "the" for United States is pronounced "the" or "thi" because "United" starts with the sound 'j' and in this case "u" is not a vowel?
The other example is in "the university". This reminds me of some exceptions in English like "the One" and "thi One". Here "O" is not a vowel. Thank you so much.

[BobK]

When not stressed it's 'the' with a schwa (/ə/). A situation that calls for stress is when there's an implied capital U: 'You're not just representing a university, you're representing the University' - here the vowel sound would be /i:/.

b