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Before episode one I figured C-3PO was a special protocol droid built by governments for governments. Considering he is in the company of an ambassador.
If we are to believe that a young impoverished slave boy assembled C-3PO from miscellaneous parts, where did Anakin acquire a database with over 6 million forms of communication?
Anakin did not actually build C-3PO. He rebuilt him.
From Wookieepedia:
Originally activated on Affa in 112 BBY, C-3PO had served as a protocol droid to the emissary of the Manakron system. Nearly eighty years later, he was gutted and discarded on the streets of Mos Espa, a city on the Outer Rim world of Tatooine. After being rebuilt by the Human slave Anakin Skywalker, C-3PO served Skywalker and his mother Shmi for over ten years, performing household chores and helping Skywalker earn his freedom by winning a pod race.
So your assumption was correct: C-3PO was built by a government for government use, and his first use was to accompany an ambassador, much like when we first see him in A New Hope.
When Anakin found him, C-3PO was a head and a gutted chassis. However, he still boasted sound wiring, as well as a standard protocol droid verbobrain and communicator module. The communicator module in particular is where the linguistic skills demonstrated by C-3PO originated:
The TranLang III Communicator module was a late generation communication module incorporating millions of galactic languages, installed in 3PO-series protocol droids and LOM-series protocol droids.
It appears that the language database was still intact within the TranLang III Communicator module of the discarded robot head that Anakin used to reconstruct C3PO. From Wookieepedia:
[C3PO's] head and gutted chassis had been discarded in a street of the city of Mos Espa on Tatooine, and were discovered by two Human youths, Anakin Skywalker and Kitster Banai.
...
C-3PO's gyro-balance circuitry was several decades old, but Skywalker was able to use scrounged and improvised replacement parts to make the droid functional again. C-3PO boasted sound wiring, as well as a standard protocol droid verbobrain and communicator module, but Skywalker could not afford even the simplest of droid coverings, and as such, left the droid's wiring exposed.
