Something to think about:

As a writer--or, more aptly--as someone who knows how to correctly spell some common phrases, watching my child learn to speak is incredibly interesting. Enthralling. Terrifying.
Over the past couple of months, Shirley has begun to mimic our speech patterns and intonations perfectly, until recently, when I discovered that she is actually saying words.
The catch is that they aren't real words. They are words as she perceives them.
When heard from across the room, "nope," is "nope." But upon closer inspection, Shirley is not actually saying the English-spelled-out-word "nope." She's saying "ope," or sometimes, "mope." This is interesting to me because the phonetic "puh" sound involves both lips coming together (there's a real name for it), which she has not done at ALL until now. This is the same reason she has yet to say "Mama" (besides the fact that God thinks it's funny to watch me keep trying to teach her to use BOTH of her lips when phrasing sounds to make words). "What's this?" is actually "HUTSiss," "Yep" is actually, "Gep," and "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain," is ... just kidding.