Natural pauses when reading and speaking


For example in a sentence like this which I found online looking this up:

お盆は祖先をまつる期間なので、祖先の霊を迎える前にお墓を掃除するのは大切なことです。

As a native speaker where would you naturally pause? I am not sure where to
mentally pause when reading and that kind of mess with my ability to
comprehend sentences in one go.




I would read it like this:

> お盆は祖先をまつる期間なので、(pause)祖先の霊を迎える前にお墓を掃除するのは(small pause)大切なことです。

or maybe like this, when reading very slowly:

> お盆は(small pause)祖先をまつる期間なので、(big pause)祖先の霊を迎える前に(small
> pause)お墓を掃除するのは(pause)大切なことです。

I read it this way because I parse the sentence this way:

［お盆は祖先をまつる期間なので］、［｛（祖先の霊を迎える前に）お墓を掃除するのは｝大切なことです］。




A good tip for non-native speakers is to pause regularly after particles or
grammar structures (in this sentence, for example, at は, を, なので, 前に, and のは).
Usually when Japanese people try to enunciate their sentences they will follow
this strategy, which although it doesn't sound 100% natural, should get you
started on the right path.

