How about SOS- (is this a word? does it mean the same thing in many languages? is this another example?)

Well, "SOS" isn't a word, it's an acronym, Of Troy, as you know. And it's a curious acronym at that because everyone knows what it means, but no-one is sure what it stands for.

Some say "Save Our Souls" or "Save Our Ship", but others say it's Morse Code: three dots, three dashes, three dots.
[Simple, elegant and unmistakeable.]

It occurs to me that the only truly universal word is not a word, but an ideogram.

Ideograms are the universal language at all multi-lingual global events like the Olympics.

Digitong ideograms are independent of language. They are constructed in accordance with a method that symmetrically divides the types of actions that structure human semantic space. These ideograms were inspired by anthropological symmetry, which makes it a satisfactory device for structuring universal memory. I call this symmetry virtual perspective because it deals accurately and symmetrically with the directions involved in meaning.

Digitong ideograms do not represent rigid concepts that behave like "categories" or sets that are hierarchically nested, and that separate the "inside" from the "outside". The range of ideograms provides a palette of the qualities of actions that are in a state of reciprocal and fractal wraping in the ideas.

"The Language of Ideas"

http://snipurl.com/cqy0