I was just thinking a bit about language in She-Ra, specifically related to interspecies communication and naming, and I wanted to write down some thoughts. I’m about to go overboard on analysis of a tiny background detail of a cartoon. You’ve been warned. haha
Rogelio obviously can’t speak English, or any other human language for that matter. This is likely due to his lizard physiology, he seems to be only able to produce various grunts, growls, and hisses as speech sounds. Regardless, he does seem to be able to understand spoken human language. As someone who has taught English as a second language and has a degree in linguistics, I can tell you that this is entirely possible as production and reception are completely different skill sets. It’s obvious to me that he does understand since he gets along just fine with the other members of the Horde, able to seemingly communicate and obviously able to follow instruction. He also seems to be able to speak his own language, whatever it might be called. (Lizardspeak? Who knows!) We can see that he does have language ability in the image below where he’s making an impassioned speech to his friends.
Note that Lonnie appears to be able to understand it, and this is likely how he communicates - through members of the Horde who have taken the time to learn his language. Lonnie may have learned to listen to and understand his language but finds herself unable to speak it, again due to the limitations of her own physiology as a human. I’m basing my assumption that she does understand his language on the fact that Lonnie looks at Rogelio as he speaks, then looks down, seemingly in thought as he finishes. I half expected her to compliment him on how well-spoken he was when I first watched this scene.
Kyle, however, shrugs and looks at Lonnie like he has no idea what’s going on. He obviously does not understand and assumes Lonnie doesn’t either.
First, I wanna say that I love the idea of these two friends bridging a cultural and species gap like this, able to understand and communicate with each other even with a major obstacle like this. It makes sense since they’ve likely grown up together that they’d pick up each others’ language. Kids are very good at learning languages.
Second, I wonder how Rogelio got his very human sounding name. None of the sounds of his name seem to be pronounceable for him, so did Lonnie give him that name? If so, did she just pull that name out of nowhere, or did she make an attempt at a human pronounceable approximation of his actual Lizardspeak name? That also insinuates that Rogelio might have names he uses to refer to the various humans and humanoids around him. How else would he reference everyone in conversation when talking to Lonnie?
I think it’s likely Rogelio does have a name different to the one the humans use for him. The fact that Rogelio can speak his own language leads me to believe that he was old enough to know and remember the name given to him by his parents before his being taken by the Horde. So it’s also possible that whoever claimed him for the Horde just assigned him a human name, not caring about whatever name he might have already had.