Random head-cannon time!!!!
For those of you who aren’t aware, one of the story board artists for ATLA made a sort of ‘what if?’ comic series called water tribe. ( @rufftoon her name’s johane matte seriously look her up!) Where-in Zhao lives, has his memory wiped by the moon and ocean spirits and lives in the northern water tribe. This particular episode of brain rot came to be when I was re-reading the series and came to when they were discussing when Zhao was first discovered to be alive, and how he’d been an empty shell and had to relearn everything. It got me thinking, Nauja and her family basically had to re-raise him he had to relearn how to do everything. What if that experience made him weirdly good deciphering non-verbal cues? Imagine it… toddler Payu trying to tell Nauja he wants something, grunting and crying because she doesn’t understand what he’s asking for and Zhao just walks up like “Hm? Oh yeah? Sure ok, got u.” And grabs whatever handing it to Payu. Who’s suddenly not crying? After being handed a thing he’s never asked for or shown any interest in whatsoever?! It would get so bad, Payu just straight up stops trying to talk and just goes to this ex-fire nation caveman for whatever he wants instead and Nauja’s PISSED.
“He needs to learn to talk dammit!!” - Nauja
“Y tho?” - Zhao probably
They never stopped wanting to keep a close eye on Zhao, Nauja just made her dad find him a house so Payu would actually try to learn to talk. I.E. - The really reason Zhao got his own place.