On Pauses

[myx]

Hey guys! just a question (rather stupid one i think, sorry! ^__^) - how do i know when to pause when speaking/reading aloud in mandarin? i can't really figure out where i should pause.

thanks!

^__^

[gougou]

Hmm, two possibilities:

a) judging from Chinese girls I knew/know: you don't pause and speak in one prolongued slur until your face turns a bluish color

B) judging from myself: you take a short break before each word that you don't know the correct tone for by heart

But seriously, from the few times when I spoke to native speakers, I didn't notice them pausing many times apart from after the end of a sentence. But maybe somebody with more experience than me can give some more insight into this?

[in_lab]

Gougou's right on. If you're like me, you pause when you have to think of how to say something, or remember a tone.

When reading out loud, if you understand the text, I think you will intuitively know when to pause. If you don't understand it, you might get it wrong. There have been times when simply hearing someone read a written passage allowed me to understand a sentence that I hadn't understand because the pauses when spoken show the structure of the sentence. Reading out loud texts you understand is good practice. Reading out loud texts you don't completely understand is just a slow way of reading, and I don't think it's very useful.

[carlo]

I think this is a very useful thing to learn, though. Pausing at the right places at least shows that you understand what you are saying.

You may find this interesting:

www.cass.net.cn/chinese/ s18_yys/yuyin/report/files/1998_4.pdf

The best way to learn IMHO is listening to professional broadcasters (TV, radio, etc). Part of their job is to deliver complex sentences in a clear and accurate manner, so they're quite good at this.