@memdmp@catgirl.center I think "hospital" is a decent one. from Latin "hospitale". in my native languages, we notably say "sjukhus", but according to Wiktionary, "hospital" is archaic Swedish, and any Norwegian speaker would recognize it from "Rikshospitalet" (a hospital), at the very least. it's also archaic German, and French calls it a "hôpital", which is close enough. others have pointed out that travel accomodations are almost a universal language. taxi, hotel, etc. and yeah, it's not hard to see how those have an advantage in becoming loan words. and of course, this is a bit of a cop out, but like, place names? notably, in Europe, "Europe"/"Europa"/"Evropa" all sound almost the same in every language. likewise, the Euro currency is pretty similar. really, *any" currency name is generally pretty standardized. talk about a "dollar" and almost all of Europe will probably assume you mean US dollars. at the very least, they'll understand that you mean currency. again, this is probably because of international trade and/or travel. "police" is another contender. I reckon why this and "hospital" are so universal is because they are emergency services. everyone needs to be able to identify and contact them in a life-threatening situation. for police in particular, it's important to recognize them on the road if you're getting pulled over. again, the common denominator for almost everything here is "Stuff That Tourists Frequently Interact With" I feel like in the European languages i know, "cafe" and "restaurant" are pretty standard too. again, essential for any tourist to be able to identify. so, they have relatively standardized names. notable exception to the tourist rule I guess: cars and trains are called anything in the languages I speak. "bil"/"Auto", "Zug"/"tåg". those sound nothing alike. but buses seem to have a pretty standard name. my hunch is that this has something to do with being part of traffic; there are bus lanes with markings that say "bus" or "buss". but car lanes don't say "car". they're just the default. so I suppose the second, weaker criteria, is that tourists have to interact with it in writing. usually by reading.