lifeofmendel

one of the episodes of the british sitcom Coupling had a neat scene where they showed one scene twice between two people who didn't speak each others' native language. As in, one character spoke english and the other person spoke icelandish or something, and they did a scene, and then they replayed it from the icelandish person's perspective as if icelandish was english and english was gibberish.

just now, i had this odd thought: what if you were in some sort of bdsm relationship or one-night-stand or something with someone who spoke another language and didn't understand yours? how do you communicate to each other the idea of a 'safe word'? which language would you use to come up with the safe word, and what factors are involved in choosing? would you always use the bottom's language or the top's language if the roles were reversed (thus having two different safe words)?

i bet i'll never know since not only would the circumstance be rare but the chances that it could be brought up in casual conversation are even rarer. silly sexually repressed contry that we are. but it's an interesting thing to think about for some reason.