What did you say?

My friend Emily watched Isaac for a few hours last week while I had a doctor's appointment. Her 2 1/2-year-old daughter is one of the most articulate children I have ever met, so I wondered if Emily would be able to understand what Isaac was saying. There are still a number of letters he can't pronounce, and some of the resulting words can only be understood through experience or context.

It turned out that Emily could understand him perfectly well while I was gone. But after I returned to her house, Isaac said something that neither of us could understand. He was asking for something he had played with earlier, and it sounded like haychoo. I kept asking Isaac to repeat himself, and he said the word exactly the same each time -- "Haychoo! Haychoo!" -- with increasing volume and frustration, as if I was the one with the problem.

Isaac can't pronounce F, S, R, V, or W sounds, and he commonly uses H as a substitution for F and S. For example, he pronounces the name Sophie, which has both an S and an F sound, as Hoe-hee. And when Isaac says fair, fire, or shower, they all sound like hair -- which he pronounces like hayoh. (Shower is a tricky one -- Isaac can't pronounce any of its three consonant sounds!)

But knowing this didn't help me figure out what a haychoo could be. I tried playing Twenty Questions with him -- what kind of noise does it make, what color is it -- but he only answered, "I dunno." Finally I looked in the toy box, and then I spotted it.

"Shaver!" I cried out.

Not only was it another word with three unpronounceable consonants, it wasn't even an actual shaver -- it was a crank-operated emergency radio / flashlight vaguely shaped like an electric razor.

But Isaac was very happy to see it again, and he carefully gave himself the closest shave a radio has ever given anyone.

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Here are a few more pronunciations, only some of which follow the laws of substitution:

stove = towche (I didn't get this one until he said, "Where the tea kettle is")
razor = yayzoo
water = yatta
early = oily
snack = chank
ambulance = amblybince
spatula = patchislah

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Although he can't pronounce these words himself, he knows how they are supposed to be pronounced. If I say them the wrong way by echoing his own pronunciation back at him, he laughs and "corrects" me -- incorrectly, of course.