This scene has fascinated me ever since I was a kid. I mean, if you think about it, Meowth didn’t really learn “Humanspeak,” at least not the way we normally think about learning a language. He was already perfectly capable of
understanding it (even if there were a couple words here and there he wasn’t
familiar with, like “seashell” or “rocket”). And that seems to be a common thing across all Pokemon–just
look at how baby Pokemon can start taking orders from their trainers from the moment they hatch.
So his problem wasn’t learning what the human words meant. It was learning how to pronounce them. And judging by the seasons changing outside the window during his learning-to-talk montage, it took him at least a year to say his first words. But once he does–once he makes it through that tongue twister for the first time–it’s like a switch is flipped and he instantly becomes fluent. In those last couple gifs you can already see him casually throwing around “huh” and “hey,” and by the next scene he’s stringing together sentences.
What does all this mean? Is
pronunciation the only barrier keeping Pokemon from talking? Could any Pokemon do what Meowth did as long as they were as ridiculously stubborn hardworking as he was? Or are most Pokemon physically incapable of saying anything but their names? If so, what makes Meowth unique?
…We’ll probably never know, but it’s fun to think about.
As you can imagine, ability to mimic human speech is really made up of two parts: physically being capable of making sounds, and mentally being able to both produce and interpret language.
For the first part, the physical aspect of speech, you need to understand that the human species spent a very long time evolving and developing parts that make communication easier. We have long throats, small mouths, deeper voice boxes, strong and rounded tongues, extremely good control of our breaths. All of these affect what sounds an animal can make: and our vocal systems are extremely complex compared to most of the animal kingdom.
Therefore, to be able to make sounds similar to human speech, an animal needs to have the right parts. Parrots, for example, are famously good at copying human speech, mostly because they too have strong, flexible, and rounded tongues like humans: meaning they can produce a lot of the same sounds.
Still, even looking at our closest relatives (apes), we can see why a lot of animals can’t imitate human speech. Many animals have a horizontal snout, whereas humans are set up very vertically. Even this severely limits an animal’s potential for mimicking human speech. So it’s very interesting, perhaps, that Meowth doesn’t seem to have much of a snout and is also bipedal, so it likely has a vertical setup as well: this is probably a big factor in why it can speak so fluently.
On that note, check out this video of an orangutan attempting human speech:
Since speech is controlled by breath, too, an animal’s lungs capabilities also limits how well it can imitate speech. Most creatures don’t have as much control over their breaths as humans. For example, a human could take a long breath immediately followed by a short breath to form a sentence with different syllables. Other animals simply don’t have that kind of lung control for variability.
Still, it should be noted that some animals are clever enough to get around the physical barriers. One elephant, for example, was shown to mimic human speech (Korean) by putting its trunk inside its mouth, and using its trunk as a makeshift tongue to make the noises. So even if an animal doesn’t have all the right parts, they might be clever enough to get around.
Still, simply the physical aspect proves that not all pokémon are capable of human speech. You can imagine Beautifly, an insect with no lips or vocal chords or even a jaw, just a proboscis instead of a tongue. Beautifly would have no hope of ever imitating human speech, because it just isn’t capable of making the right sounds. (How it says its own name is probably more of a whistle? If I had to guess).
Okay, now for the mental aspect: The part of the brain that interprets speech is different from the part of the brain that produces speech. This diagram is for a human, but many studies have shown similar setups in other animals. For example, dogs which understand commands like “sit” or “stay” have strong speech interpretation areas in their brains. Most pokémon, too, seem to share this strength: like mentioned above, Meowth seemed capable of understanding human speech all along, but not able to mimic it yet.
If an animal simply wants to be able to mimic human speech, it really only needs the “speech production” part of the brain (Broca’s area) – not even the interpretation (Wernicke’s area). However if it wants to be able to effectively communicate, especially like Meowth, it needs very strong in both.
So the fact that Meowth is able to both understand and produce language means both parts of its brain are very strong. And that isn’t true for all animals in our world, either. Cows, for example, don’t have the right pathways in their brain to be able to learn how to make any sound other than “moo”. Zebra finches, on the other hand, only learn how to make sounds when they are young: Once they grow older, they are literally incapable of learning any new sounds and are stuck with the same bird calls for the rest of their lives.
So again, this would be a reason for not all pokémon can learn human speech. Their brains just haven’t evolved for that. Miltank may just be out of luck.
Bringing this all together…
For a pokémon to be able to mimic human speech, it needs to have a vocal system capable of making the same sounds as a human, and it needs to have a strong Brocca’s area of the brain for producing speech. Language interpretation is a different part of the brain than language production: just because a pokémon can understand human language exceptionally well does not mean it would be able to mimic it.
So, no, pronunciation is not the only barrier keeping pokémon from talking. I’m sure that there are other species out there besides Meowth that could do it, but hopefully now you have a better idea of why Meowth is so special! Physically, it must be different from cats in our world and have a flexible tongue, a vertically-oriented vocal system, deeper vocal chords, good control over it’s breath. More importantly, perhaps, a large part of Meowth’s brain is devoted to both interpreting, learning, and producing speech.
So…why is only Team Rocket’s Meowth capable of speech, and not all Meowths we see? I’d chalk that up to necessity. An animal in the wild who has never heard or seen a human obviously has no need to imitate human speech. Not all orangutans or elephants in zoos attempt to mimic humans either: the few examples I mentioned are all very unique instances. It seems that only the creatures most social with humans, and encounter them the most, are the ones who try to speak.
So our Meowth? He just spent so much time around humans – and so little time around other pokémon – that picking up human speech seemed a necessity. Like the elephant in the video, he wanted to bond with humans so he taught himself how to speak.
White people use the majority of drugs but black people go to jail longer. This talks more about why our jails and prison are full of black and poor people
Since this is much longer than the others if you scroll down to figure 5 and read the information about it that’s where this is detailed but the whole thing is a good read.
Reblogging this to here because I can never find examples of white privilege and systematic oppression when I go searching for it in our blog or my personal one.
if you give me a task with no deadline i will literally never do it but if you give me a deadline i will get it done exactly 1 hour before the deadline even if the deadline is in six years
god dammit my tags got cut off AGAIN I’m hitting the tag limit on like every post lately, I really need to work on that
Anyway I went on to say that there are 5 major executive functions of the human brain. These are the ‘higher functions’ that really distinguish between a human brain and that of any other animal. We have added intelligence on top of that, but these are the functional abilities our brains have that the rest of the animal kingdom does not have on a a structural level. There are 5 of them. ADHD affects all 5. And none of them are actually ‘attention’ (the closest function to anything that can reasonably be called ‘attention’ is what’s called Working Memory, which is your brain’s ability to hold a specific task in mind to come back to it; distractions are inevitable, but a healthy brain will hear a phone ring, look up, and remember to go back to what it was doing before. An ADHD brain will hear the phone riBANG ALL MEMORY OF THE CURRENT TASK IS GONE. ADHD brain looks up, sees the name on the caller id, oh it’s an unknown number, oh it’s probably some political pollster, oh man this year’s election is just awful I can’t believe people are supporting that angry cheeto. Oh cheetos I’m hungry I should go make a snack. What kind of snacks do we have? Did I remember to buy cereal at the store the other day? What about dog food? Oh my god I forgot to let the dog back in the house this is why I should have gotten a cat. Oh my friend sent me a great cat video earlier I should watch that. AND GUESS WHAT YOU NEVER GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING BECAUSE THE STRUCTURE IN YOUR BRAIN THAT SUPPORTS RETURNING TO A PARTIALLY COMPETED TASK DOES NOT EXIST THE WAY IT DOES FOR A NORMAL HEALTHY BRAIN. This is why even if you start a task well before a deadline you can’t keep to it until it’s been completed; the consequences of it being done MUST be more compelling than everything else in the immediate environment for the brain to see it.
No matter how much time you give yourself to complete the task, if you have ADHD it will take you 100% of that time, every time, which is why having ADHD actually TEACHES YOU to put things off, because it’s the only way to shorten the total time actually spent completing the task – the disorder rewards you for self-destructive behavior because it’s the only way you can get things done at all, and you end up living in a permanent state of extreme stress, hopping from one emergency deadline to the next even though you hate yourself for it every single time). The disorder has been horribly named in a way that trivializes just how serious and life-ruining it actually is.
ADHD is a very, very serious disorder and the pop psych/common understanding of it makes it seem HORRIBLY trivial compared to the real damage it actually does to people’s lives.
if you give me a task with no deadline i will literally never do it but if you give me a deadline i will get it done exactly 1 hour before the deadline even if the deadline is in six years
god dammit my tags got cut off AGAIN I’m hitting the tag limit on like every post lately, I really need to work on that
Anyway I went on to say that there are 5 major executive functions of the human brain. These are the ‘higher functions’ that really distinguish between a human brain and that of any other animal. We have added intelligence on top of that, but these are the functional abilities our brains have that the rest of the animal kingdom does not have on a a structural level. There are 5 of them. ADHD affects all 5. And none of them are actually ‘attention’ (the closest function to anything that can reasonably be called ‘attention’ is what’s called Working Memory, which is your brain’s ability to hold a specific task in mind to come back to it; distractions are inevitable, but a healthy brain will hear a phone ring, look up, and remember to go back to what it was doing before. An ADHD brain will hear the phone riBANG ALL MEMORY OF THE CURRENT TASK IS GONE. ADHD brain looks up, sees the name on the caller id, oh it’s an unknown number, oh it’s probably some political pollster, oh man this year’s election is just awful I can’t believe people are supporting that angry cheeto. Oh cheetos I’m hungry I should go make a snack. What kind of snacks do we have? Did I remember to buy cereal at the store the other day? What about dog food? Oh my god I forgot to let the dog back in the house this is why I should have gotten a cat. Oh my friend sent me a great cat video earlier I should watch that. AND GUESS WHAT YOU NEVER GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING BECAUSE THE STRUCTURE IN YOUR BRAIN THAT SUPPORTS RETURNING TO A PARTIALLY COMPETED TASK DOES NOT EXIST THE WAY IT DOES FOR A NORMAL HEALTHY BRAIN. This is why even if you start a task well before a deadline you can’t keep to it until it’s been completed; the consequences of it being done MUST be more compelling than everything else in the immediate environment for the brain to see it.
No matter how much time you give yourself to complete the task, if you have ADHD it will take you 100% of that time, every time, which is why having ADHD actually TEACHES YOU to put things off, because it’s the only way to shorten the total time actually spent completing the task – the disorder rewards you for self-destructive behavior because it’s the only way you can get things done at all, and you end up living in a permanent state of extreme stress, hopping from one emergency deadline to the next even though you hate yourself for it every single time). The disorder has been horribly named in a way that trivializes just how serious and life-ruining it actually is.
ADHD is a very, very serious disorder and the pop psych/common understanding of it makes it seem HORRIBLY trivial compared to the real damage it actually does to people’s lives.
Filling in the Holes: The potential queerness of Stanley Yelnats (and Zero.)
A long post with many Holes spoilers ahead.
Lately, I’ve been reading the book Holes with some of my students. This of course means I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and one thought that has wiggled into my mind and refused to leave is this idea of “what is Stanely and Zero are queer?” Or, if nothing else, function as a metaphor for queer kids and their first relationships? (note: I am using queer here as an umbrella term for anything non cis-heteronormative. This could imply them as gay, bi, pan, ace with a same-gender attraction, trans, or any other number of queer identities) Also note: I am only using the book Holes for this reading, not the movie, author’s comments, or follow up works.
Holes is a book built around the idea of inference. Much of the underlying meaning of the book is in the subtext, inferences, not directly stated. The finale chapter even tells the read that we have to “fill in the holes” ourselves to answer any lingering questions. Well, get your shovels ready my friends! We have a hole to fill.
There are three levels of this queer reading that, together, make the case for me. There is the textual relationship of Stanley and Zero, their place within the parallels to other sets of characters, and finally the Hole metaphor itself. Bear with me to then end.
1. Stanely and Zero within the text.
The central relationship of Holes is the fire-forged bond between Stanley Yelnats and Hector Zeroni, known as Zero. They become friends, look out for each other, save each other’s lives. Stanley teaches Zero how to read, risks his life to save his, even carries him up a mountain, and eventually brings Zero home with him.
Within Holes, neither Stanley or Zero are ever mentioned having an interest in girls. In fact, the only mention of girlfriends, is from X-ray, suggesting that Stanley is writing to a girlfriend so the others won’t bother him about writing to his mom. Their strongest bond is to each other.
Now, textually, all of this reads as pure platonic friendship (albeit a very strong one.) This may have even been the intention of the author while writing it. But there are some very…interesting moments that can be seen as framing this friendship as something even deeper. Notably, while on Big Thumb, Stanley watches Zero sleep for hours. At one point, he is mesmerized by the way a flower petal dances across Zero’s face as he breathes. There’s nearly two paragraphs of Stanley just watching that flower petal and being disappointed when it finally falls on the ground. That’s some friendship you got there, Stanley.
But this, in itself, is more fanfic fodder than queer reading. However, there is more.
2. The Kate and Sam parallel.
There are two sets of characters that Stanley and Zero clearly parallel in the books, with two curses that must be broken that accompany them. (Both of these pairs are male-female pairs as well)
The first and most obvious is Elya and Madame Zeroni, Stanley and Zero’s respective ancestors. Elya was cursed when he failed to carry Madame Zeroni up a mountain and let her drink from the water there. Stanley breaks this family curse by carrying Zero up Big Thumb and saving his life with the water that is there.
The SECOND parallel is far more interesting, and that is with Kate and Sam. Kate and Sam are the whirlwind tragic romance of the book. The white school teacher and the black illiterate onion picker who fall in love. The Green Lake is cursed when Sam is killed by the town and thus, Sam and Kate are ripped apart.
There are clear parallels with Sam and Zero. Both black, both illiterate, both incredibly smart (Sam is a brilliant salesman and can memorize poetry just by hearing it once, while Zero is a math genius.)
Now, SAM is run out of town after his relationship with Kate is discovered. He flees across the lake and is killed, thus cursing the Lake for a hundred years. Not a drop of rain falls on the lake and it shrivels up.
ZERO is run out of town after his relationship with Stanley comes to light. The other boys know that Stanley has been teaching Zero to read and Zero has been digging his Holes. Like the sheriff sits back and allows Sam to be killed, the counselors at the Camp sit back and let Zero run out across the lake to die.
Except, he does not die. While Kate could not save Sam, STANLEY can save Zero. He takes off after him, and eventually works to get Zero to go home with him. Once Stanley and Zero are taken home together, it begins to rain on the lake. The curse is lifted.
The lake is cursed because Sam and Kate were ripped apart. The curse on the lake is lifted when Stanley and Zero are allowed to stay together. Romantic parallels, yes?
But we have one more point to cover.
3. The holes-closetmetaphor.
Here is what I propose: digging the holes themselves is a metaphor for staying in the closet.
Being in the closet, I should start by saying, is not a state of being. It is a process. It is a constant effort, censoring yourself, watching yourself, walking on eggshells. Digging the holes within the book functions as a metaphor for this.
Every single day, Stanley and Zero dig holes. It is hard work, tiring work, dangerous in its own right. On top of that, they are constantly monitored, like those in the closet always feel eyes on them to stay hidden. The grueling, dangerous work of digging is like the dangerous work of staying in the closet. Every day, they dig the same hole, the same depth, the same with, trying to stay within the same, acceptable mold. And why do it? Because the alternative- coming out, or leaving the camp, is seen as both isolating and even MORE dangerous.
But eventually, Zero DOES leave. Tired of digging, he risks the desert.
And Stanley follows him. Like a queer kid following their first partner out of the closet, Stanley risks the desert for Zero. It nearly kills them both, like coming out can be deadly for some.
But you know what happens? Because of that risk, they both eventually end up FREE and TOGETHER by relying on each other and the strength of their relationship.
So what does all this mean?
It will be easy for many to look at this analysis and simply write it off, to attack it, that I’m trying too hard, to say terrible and homophobic things about it. And I expect that. I’m not saying that this reading was intentional by the author, but I am saying that it exists regardless.
Between the actual depth of relationship between Stanley and Zero, their clear parallel to Sam and Kate, and the poignancy of the holes-closet metaphor, I think it is WELL within reason for us to view their story as a queer story if we want to. And I do.
callanswall 