4

Creating the beeps and sounds that make up R2's language consisted of electronically synthesised and human-generated sounds:

R2-D2's personality was developing like a toddler's, and Burtt decided that, like a baby, the droid should communicate with recognizable but inarticulate emotional sounds. He added modified human-generated squeaks and sounds into the electronic mix, and the final product ended up being roughly fifty percent synthesizer and fifty percent Burtt doing baby-talk.

The emphasis was apparently put on conveying R2's emotions and attitude in a given situation. However, does the end-result follow any structure of a language? That is, could one (in theory) decipher the syntax of what R2 is saying or are his squeaks and beeps effectively random?

Note: This question is of course out-of-universe. Of course what he says makes perfect sense to 3PO in-universe.

Null
  • 69,853
  • 22
  • 297
  • 381
bitmask
  • 30,712
  • 20
  • 141
  • 233
  • 1
    In the rescue of Palpatine in SW III, they are heading back for a crash landing when R2 emits some sounds. Palpatine gives him what seems to be a 'filthy' look but says nothing. If it turns out that babble is translatable, I'd love to know what R2 said to provoke that reaction. My bet is either "This is gonna' be *awesome!"* or "I'm not cleaning up after we land. Just so we're clear on that.". – Andrew Thompson Mar 17 '13 at 02:13
  • @AndrewThompson: As the Sith Lord, I always imagined he is simply annoyed by R2's cheerful personality. But by the first (fan-)rule of Star Wars, his reaction was never filmed. – bitmask Mar 17 '13 at 18:20
  • That question's answers don't really address this question ... – SamB May 03 '15 at 01:20
  • The way I'm reading this, he's more asking if there was a specific meaning of any sound in the mind of the people like Ben who were making the movie. As in, there's an actual Klingon Language - the dialogue in the Trek films are not random foreign-sounding gibberish. BB-8 is saying "real words" - Way deep in the mix is Bill Hader's voice used as a base. But R2 almost certainly did not have such a crafted lexicon. They're just crafted to make it clear he's excited, angry, sad, etc. – VBartilucci Jun 28 '18 at 14:37

0 Answers0