Nuts and Bolts: deaffrication.

 This is a word, like niggardly, which might be taken by the ignorant to mean something objectionable. As this is the case, The Word Den cannot recommend its use.

There's also, predictably, an opposite process to deaffrication called affrication. This word might be more acceptable (but if people are determined to take offence, which they so often are, there still might be trouble. Ah well.).

Deaffrication and affrication most commonly occur when children are learning to speak. Deaffrication happens when instead of an affricate sound (that's a ch or a j sound) another sound is used instead. Jump might end up as shump, for instance.

In affrication, the ch or j get put in where they're not conventionally required. So, a shovel might be called a chovel.

Children tend to get all this sorted out by the time they're three or four. 

But they do become just slightly less cute when they do.

Process to consider Today: deaffriction. This word was made up in the 1800s. It comes from the Latin words ad, meaning to and fricare, to rub.

.People are still arguing about the origin of the word Africa, but there was a tribe in the north of the continent whom the Romans called Afri, or Afer, or Ifir, and the name might have something to so with that.