StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Watched the ROTJ DVD, where C3PO was able to communicate with the Ewoks. Obviously, he recognized their dialect, so sometime in his past the language had been programmed into him.

But that made me think of something. What if C3PO was placed in a situation where he encountered a language that he had never encountered. As a protocol droid, do you think he has the ability to learn a given language after hearing a certain amount, or is he screwed and relies only on languages that he's had programmed into him?

Yes.

In Truce at Bakura, he'd never encountered the Ssi-Ruuvi language (they that all realised it was close to Astromech speech)

In Courtship of Princess Leia, he learned to decode a new imperial code.

Well that answers that question then.

So if he was placed in the Alpha quadrant he could learn English & Klingon (I mean, other than the usual way of sitting down with some books and language tapes)... ; )

The 3PO protocol android is fluent in over six millions of forms of communication, a statement which is made so routinely that the full meaning is quite often lost. Its capacity for linguistic analysis is difficult to exaggerate.

A previous such discussion.

Didn't know about the previous post (my search didn't find it). Question answered.