How to Pause in a Sentence

Speaking with the right rhythm in a sentence really matters, which enables your Mandarin to sound more natural and authentic. If you want to speak Chinese smoothly and effectively, you should pause at the right position within a sentence other than saying all the sounds and tones correctly. 

Pause is a brief stop between two independent words or phrases within one sentence. Pausing at the wrong place might cause confusion in your communication. Also, using the same pause between characters within a sentence may make you sound like a robot. Within a word or phrase, you need to speak each character without any pauses. People might skip the full sound of some characters by changing it to a neutral tone to make the word or phrase sound as a whole. 

The question is when to pause.  If you have listened to enough native communications, you might get this skill naturally but  still here are some tips for you to master it. 

Tip 1: don't make pauses within a word or phrase. 

For example, “我妈妈在医院工作。” should be spoken with proper pauses like this "我妈妈／在医院／工作。”
In this sentence, 我妈妈， 在医院， 工作 are words that should be spoken with connecting sound. We only pause between each chunk of them.

Tip 2: Character with neutral tone (fifth tone, light, quick, and obscure) needs to be spoken together with its previous word. 

Some function words, such as 的，了，着，吗，吧 are usually pronounced as neutral tone, for example，
小王的哥哥／去美国了吗？
躺着看书／不好，你／最好／坐着看吧。

When reading characters out loud, Chinese learners tend to give syllables their full tones. Thus, some syllables that are neutral tone in conversation are pronounced with full tones instead. For example, 朋友 may be read off as péngyǒu instead of péngyou. To pronounce them correctly and naturally, you'd better follow the pronunciation of your teacher, mentor, or audios. 

Tip 3: verb and single-character object should be connected 
他／开车／开了／很多年，很会／挑选车。
他可以／帮助你。

Tip 4: If you want to emphasize a word in a sentence, you can say that word slower and louder.
我的眼镜 (slower and louder) ／在哪儿？
他今年夏天没去中国。(It is him rather than other ppl.)
他今年夏天没去中国。(Talking about this year rather than last year.)
他今年夏天没去中国。(Emphasizing this summer rather spring or other seasons.)

他今年夏天没去中国。(Emphasizing he DID NOT go.)

他今年夏天没去中国。(Emphasizing China rather than other countries.)

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We want to speak

• Clearly
• Accurately 
• Relevantly 
• Completely 
• Smoothly
• Effectively 
• Authentically 
• interjections 
• pause fillers
• final particles