I've noticed that Harry Belafonte, when singing mento folk songs, sometimes pronounces "The" as "De" and sometimes as "The" - sometimes even using both pronunciations within a single verse or chorus. Is this a strange Belafonte characteristic (perhaps due to his being brought up partly in Jamaica and partly in New York), or is alternating between the two pronunciations like that normal among Caribbean folk singers? I ask because I would like to sound reasonably authentic, if possible, when singing mento or calypso songs. I would have expected that Carribean singers would either always pronounce "the" as "the" or always pronounce it as "de", so I was surprised when I recently noticed that, as I say, Belafonte alternates between the two.