Mispronunciation with Jennifer England (A Practice)

Ever feel awkward in trying to express, connect or attune to another? Ever interpret your awkwardness as a failure? 

In this short practice episode, Jennifer England invites us to explore mispronunciation not just as a linguistic slip, but as a relational metaphor. Inspired by recent conversations with X'unei Lance Twitchell, you’re invited to notice the moments you "miss the mark" in connection—and to consider what might be fertile, even beautiful, in the in-between.

You’ll be guided through:

• A reframing of mispronunciation as an opening, not an error.
• Gentle prompts to explore awkwardness, misunderstanding, and self-expression.
• A two-part inquiry to help you stay present with the discomfort of “not quite getting it right.”
• An embodied invitation to soften and stay—instead of fix or retreat.

Whether you're navigating a tough moment with a loved one or reflecting on your own self-expression, this episode is a chance to pause and relate differently to misunderstanding itself.

Links & resources—

• For more practices and inspiration from Jennifer get bi-weekly inspiration to help you navigate the hard mess of leading and being human
• Follow Jennifer on Instagram or LinkedIn
• Talk with Jennifer! Share an insight or ask a question here jennifer@sparkcoaching.ca

Gratitude for this show’s theme song Inside the House, composed by the talented Yukon musician, multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Jordy Walker. Artwork by the imaginative writer, filmmaker and artist Jon Marro. 

Transcript

Mispronunciation with Jennifer England (A Practice)
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[00:00:00] in the last episode, I spoke with American Scholar Tlingit language teacher, author, poet, and Professor X'unei Lance Twitchell, and he invited us into a real life process of untangling the mind to discover the headwaters of love. Creativity and intimacy as we wade into the unknown of learning something new.

And he also invited us into trust that something unbreakable is always known to us. Something that brings us home. And X'unei encouraged us to stay with the awkwardness of learning that process of discovering what is unbreakable. Entails a fumbling, even embarrassment sometimes. Now, he was talking about language per se, but it got me curious about what we could [00:01:00] learn from him in the context of relationship.

So here's a practice for you this week, and we're gonna play with this idea of mispronunciation. And not just in the sense of sound, but in the way that we relate to one another. And in North America especially, we often interpret mispronunciation as disrespect. And yes, if it's done deliberately, it certainly can be.

But mispronunciation also opens doors. And this was something I learned from the philosopher, Bayo Akomolafe. When he notices how hard people try to pronounce his name correctly, including me. There's this earnestness to trying to get it right and to be respectful.

And I don't know about you, but I'm often embarrassed when I mispronounce something or I misunderstand or misinterpret, and yet mispronunciation, if we take it in a broader interpretation, has some upsides, [00:02:00] and that's what we're gonna be exploring in this practice.

so what are you mispronouncing? And again, this isn't language per se. I'm encouraging you to think about this a little more playfully and broadly, and so consider your relationships with other humans.

You could think of your friendships, colleagues, you could think of neighbors or your broader community you interact with. And I want you to just reflect on where there seems to be more mispronunciation or misunderstanding than coherence. It's like you are trying to understand and connect, but something's not quite coherent, not failing per se, but you're also not quite hitting the mark of fluency of flow.

It could even be when you're trying to explain something you feel, but there's like this slippery gap between what you sense on the inside and what you can [00:03:00] express, almost like you're mispronouncing yourself.

And while this might seem a little strange, I invite you to step in anyway because my hunch is. That we are generally intolerant of awkwardness of the in-between moments where we don't get it right, and our instinct is to fix them or pave them over or to retreat rather than lean in and get curious about what might be the fertile ground in the mispronunciation.

And when we don't do that. This is where divisions polarization and distance, especially across difference build up. So what if I were to invite you to befriend mis pronunciation? Step one is to notice where it's happening and what it feels like in your body. Discordant, grating, uncomfortable, something that kind of [00:04:00] propels you to wanna fix or get rid of it.

And if this is the case, can you get curious about what is it that I'm trying to protect or avoid when I'm trying to escape this awkward experience? And step two is to ask what's right about this awkwardness, what's right about not quite hitting the mark, the misinterpretations. What might it mean to embrace the awkwardness, to usher it in and allow it to be there just as it is?

My hunch is that experimenting with the upsides of mispronunciation in our relationships, we'll help you relax your expectations of how you or another person should show up or relate. it might widen the aperture on relational intimacy, normalizing the challenge of how we translate and interpret across human skins, and that it [00:05:00] might encourage you to stay in relationship even when things get awkward or hard or uncomfortable.

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So you can bring a more curious humility as you stay engaged. And I think often in my own intimate relationships with my partner or my kids, I think what's most interesting is when I can really soften and I can be okay with the awkwardness to hold a gaze, to swallow the discomfort that's happening in my chest.

There is a collective softening that allows us to find our way through. Not to an easy arrival point, but to stay in connection through even the difficult patches. I hope that this offers a little encouragement in this experience of being human, that it might soften the impulse to fix what appears to be broken so that you can include, not push away these mispronunciations that [00:06:00] inevitably arise in our relating. 

Jennifer: A few final words about practice. Practice is different than a tool or a technique or simply a mindset shift practice is like an ecosystem unto itself. It's more like a world that invites your playful curiosity. It invites you to pay attention differently.

What can you learn, see, feel, sense from a new doing, a new action? What you'll experience will be different than me or a friend who does the same practice. It's experimental. It's designed to be fresh and alive, dynamic, and relat. And what I emphasize is practice is a gift of learning from your own direct experience, not from experts, coaches, sages, [00:07:00] teachers, but from you.

Practice centers, you as the awake, and attuned one that you already are. Practice is the invitation.

And direct experience is your greatest teacher. I'm Jennifer England. Thanks for practicing and being on this journey on the tension of emergence