This book includes DroidSpeak as a spoken language for Human Nerds.
That book is written by Ben Burtt, the sound editor for all five films, and is actually very fun and informative. Burtt has a great sense of humour.
Apparently, it was just a movie, but is elevated to cult status.
Artoo beeps/chirps because beeps and chirps were what the writer considered an example of how computers communicated with eachother to exchange technical information/data. It’s what they knew in the 70’s. It also explains Luke’s hair-do.
Cripes, they made the jump to light speed. Kinda makes beeps and chirps reasonable.
Why does my neighbor still connect at 28.8 while the rest of the world is much faster?
Why does my grandmother have a rotary phone?
Why do we get 10 buns and eight hot dogs per pack?
Why do we stop to pay tolls?
Not everything fits or makes sense now, why would it then?
I just wanted to chip in that clearly R2-D2 is male. When he isn’t rumbling around or beeping, he’s hacking computers, and he does that by flipping out a very … um, phallic appendage, and twiddling it around in a little hole.
Henche my pick-up line which no-one ever gets. “Hey. Wanna see my R2-D2 impersonation?”
adolescent male, that is. I’d say R2 is about 15, 16 years old.
Now what about 3PO?
The roleplaying game partly explained this. Han and Chewbacca had been together so long that they picked up enough of each others’ language to get by. Same for Luke and Artoo, Luke figured out the beeps by RotJ.
DORK ALERT!!!
The Phantom Menace told as that C-3P0 is actually younger than Artoo. Artoo was already made and functioning as a repair droid for the Nubian flagship at the beginning of TPM. Threepio on the other hand was just being assembled (and hadn’t even been completed) at the time of the events of TPM. So we don’t know when Artoo came into existence. But, for purposes of this discussion, lets assume that the first time the we saw Artoo on the Nubian ship was the first time that he was put into action.
TPM happened 10 years or so before Attack of the Clones. Attack of the Clones happened about two or three years before the action that will occur in Epidoe III. Episode IV, A New Hope (the original Star Wars) occurred about 18-20 years after the events of Episode III (whatever those might be). Empire Strikes Back is a few years after ANH and Return of the Jedie is a few years after ESB. Therefore, Artoo and Threepio must be at least 36-40 by the end of ROTJ.
DORK ALERT ENDED!!!
You don’t know droids very well, my friend. 
Why do you think their names have changed from letters and numbers to “Artoo” and “Threepio”? Droids are probably considered an under class, and in fact aren’t allowed in some establishments, but there are clearly humans who consider them to be more than just pets. Chewie goes through a lot of trouble to put C-3PO back together. And R2 clearly has the cheek to flat out lie to his masters on several occasions.
And by the way…
Nope. It’s an O.
Artoo could speak Basic if he had a voice module put in.
However, in the NJO, he has a translation screen, I believe.
db4530,
Just because 3P0 was built in the form after R2, his parts may have been older. Anakin must have gotten his AI and language chips from somewhere…he sure as heck never appears smart enough to speak 6000 languages to program them himself.
Odd, every book I’ve read has it as a zero, AFAIK…
I don’t think there’s a definitive answer for this. The official merchandise can’t even agree on how to phonetically spell Threepio’s designation. It was “C-3PO” in the 70s and 80s but the new stuff says “C-3P0”. FWIW, the roleplaying game says “3PO”.
That’s funny, every book I’ve read doesn’t mention him at all 
(sorry)
I am just going by what starwars.com says.
Anyway, R2 has more personality with no voice, than young (or teen) Anakin and Padme put together.
One thing I always liked about Star Wars, and found to be somewhat realistic, was how Han could talk to Chewie without speaking his language, and vice versa. Wookies and “humans” probably don’t have the same sort of vocal cords to begin with, so it’s unreasonable to assume their langauges can even cross species. But their ears are just fine, and they can understand each other without being able to talk with the same words.
It’s not unreasonable to think the same of R2. He doesn’t need to speak English; anyone who’d interact with an R2 unit enough would get the gist of it soon enough.
The only times humans can truly understand what Artoo says is when he is plugged into a spacecraft and his speech is coming up on a monitor display. Other times they’re just talking to him and understanding him as much as you would do so with a pet.
Unless Threepio is there, who often translates. Which is part of his job.
Isn’t that his whole job?
R2’s “speech” sounds something like a dial-up modem or fax machine, so he ‘sounds like a computer’. I think Lucas did a pretty good job with it, considering that it was 1975, 76 when the film was made.
As for how anyone understands what he’s saying, I’m lost there. When I was working dial-up ISP support, I could hear a good handshake/authentication over the phone and recognize it. Sometimes I could hear the handshake/authentication and know it wasn’t good, but there were times when it sounded good to me and didn’t connect.
My friend has a budgie, which sounds just like Artoo when he chirps.
That is all I have to add to this conversation.
I have a feeling that if Artoo had a voice module, the movie would be upgraded to an NC17 rating. That’s why he doesn’t have one-he’d make a sailor blush!