When confronted with a language barrier, I find it easier to simply point to the axe in my head.

How wonderful! I hadn't seen it before.

My favorite is the Baselang: "Won suripiria nemia voci 'wonden divin'. Un chafergarbar i conboro wonden siras posi."

With explanation here:

Re-lex: "I surprisingly presently linguistically-express 'my god'. A bladed+augmentative+bar opposite+outside me+pronominal-article head presently is-position."

Re-translation: "I say, 'My god' in surprise. An axe is inside my head."

Baselang does not currently have any way to express exclamations, which explains the rather tepid translation. The problem is how do I come up with a core translation of "Oh my god!" that can then by equivalently translated in Japanese and Spanish? (The goal of the language is to provide for automatic translation TO (not from) English, Japanese and Spanish.) Spanish is fairly similar, but I don't know about Japanese. The phrase _wonden divin_ would be "my god", but it is a literal expression.

...

Of course I have absolutely no idea what Baselang is, but the guy who did it is Jeff Henning who has this rather fascinating (way-above-my-head) site.

Damn. This would have come in handy on my last trip to southeast Asia.

Ah yes. Very useful indeed.

Is there a site for translations of "Excuse me, but I'm going to have to tickle you now"?

EELS ON A HOVERCRAFT!

When confronted with a language barrier, I find it easier to simply point to the axe in my head.

jrossi4r, I LOLed. That was great.

I love me some Old English.