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In this clip from the new movie _I choose you_ , it appears that Pikachu
speaks natural language.

There is a clip of it in English on
[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5COB13How7U) (speaks around 35
seconds)

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm interested to know how is the ability to
speak explained? I remember that there was one time where the Unowns were
dubbing the Pokemon, is this something similar?


CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-18T20:38:55.000
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2018-11-30T16:54:38.610
2017-11-24T05:35:32.220
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question
pokemon
How can Pikachu speak now?


I watched the movie (English-dubbed). The movie gives no explanation of why
Pikachu is suddenly shown speaking a human tongue.

However - and this is just my impression - I don't think that Pikachu
_actually did_ speak a human tongue here. The astute _Pokémon_ -watcher will
recall that there are many scenes in the anime where a Pokémon is able to
convey complex thoughts to its trainer just by making its species' noises.
This happens particularly often with Pikachu/Ash.

So this scene felt to me more like a "translation convention" for the benefit
of the audience, who, unlike Ash, cannot understand what "pika pi pikachuuuu
pika" means. Typically, when the audience needs to be apprised of what Pikachu
is saying, Ash will reiterate what Pikachu supposedly said to him (you know,
along the lines of "What's that, Pikachu? Team Rocket's giant Meowth-shaped
balloon is over thataways?"). But I think that approach wouldn't have worked
very well in this particular scene, so we get Pikachu "speaking" a human
tongue instead. This works fine here, because the only character who witnesses
Pikachu's "speech" is Ash, who would understand Pikachu just as well even if
Pikachu were speaking Pikachu-ese.

As supporting evidence, I note that Ash doesn't seem even mildly surprised by
this turn of events, which suggests to me that Pikachu was still speaking
Pikachu-ese at him. (Though, I suppose, he might have had other things to
worry about, like the gang of mind-controlled Pokémon that are about to beam-
spam him out of existence.)


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2017-11-19T23:33:05.230
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2017-11-20T07:40:10.343
2017-11-20T07:40:10.343
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answer