2. Overview
Confused about that side smirk 😏 he just sent? Is he laughing
at something you said? Or is it one of those emoji guys use
to flirt? Is he genuinely interested or just amused in
general? The confusion can become equivalent to stress. Here
are some interesting facts about emojis.
So how do you respond? Perhaps with another equally confusing
emoji. The one with the angel face 😇 is a suitable reply.
After all, it is a relatively new vocabulary, though growing
the most rapidly out of all others.
We’ve communicated using pictures for thousands of years now
(both the Egyptian and Mesopotamian hieroglyphics are at
least 4000 years old). But we could not have imagined only a
few years ago how standard and expressive emoji would become.
3. What is an Emoji?
Simply put, an emoji is a visual representation of a symbol,
object, or emotion. It’s so commonplace on social media
platforms now that you can access the emoji keyboard with a
simple key tap on your phone.
The word “emoji” was added to the Oxford dictionary in 2015.
Originally a Japanese word, it means “picture message”. No
wonder the country that’s so technologically advanced came up
with another way of communicating ideas and comments through
mere pictures.
But emoji are also much more than just a millennial trend. It
would be appropriate to refer to these icons as more a
primitive language than just a fad. A product of
digitalisation, they bring emotional nuance to otherwise
plain text. “I understand” can sound formal or passive, but a
red heart ❤ at the end conveys sympathy and warmth along with
the message.
4. Where do Emoji Come From?
There is some controversy about which organisation it was
that first came up with the idea. The Japanese carrier Docomo
launched support for emoji in 1999. Still, newfound evidence
shows that, two years prior, Softbank Japan had already
launched a phone that supported the use of 90 different
emojis.
Japanese artist Shigetka Kurita in 1999, launched 176
different images that he sketched on a 12 x 12-pixel set.
These images could be selected from a grid similar to a
keyboard and sent directly to phones as text messages.
This collection, thought to be the precursor of the modern
emoji lexicon today, is displayed as part of the permanent
collection at New York’s Museum of Modern
Arts (MOMA). The collection includes images that
depict traffic (aeroplane, ship, car), technology
(tv, cellphone), the weather (umbrella, clouds), and even
phases of the moon.
In 2007, a team at Google campaigned to get emoji recognised
by the Unicode Consortium, a body much like the United
5. The Evolution of Emoji
1999
Emojis are introduced, with icons for technology, time, and
weather etc.
2010
Unicode accepts the introduction of emojis.
2011
Apple adds the official emoji keyboard to iOS.
2014
The Great Emoji Politicisation and digital acknowledgement of
cultures to become inclusive begins.
2015
A revamp of emoji takes place with new skin tones and
depictions of same-sex couples.
2016 – Onwards
New emoji are added regularly, with non-conventional
ones like the pride flag, single dad, weightlifting woman,
and icons that convey messages across languages, such as a
mosquito to represent malaria.
As emoji popularity boomed in the past decade following their
adoption by Unicode, they became more plentiful as well. The
Consortium adds dozens more emoji to its approved list every
6. 25 Fun Facts about the History of
Emojis
1.World Emoji Day is celebrated on July 17th every year. In
2014, Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia, the wiki for
emoji, created the unofficial day in honour of the date that
appears on the calendar emoji 📅
2.In fact, Oxford’s 2015 word of the year was not a word but
the laughing with tears emoji 😂
3.The pluralisation is not emojis, but emoji, when referring
to more than one
4.In 2013, the well-known book Moby Dick was translated into
a book almost entirely made up of emojis. Fred Beneson led
the team that converted the words of the book into emoji
representations, nicknaming the classic “Emoji Dick”.
5.Only 7% of the people that use the peach emoji 🍑 mean it in
the sense of the fruit. Everyone overwhelmingly applies it in
non-fruit contexts for the rest of the time due to its
resemblance to human bottoms.
6.Another controversial food emoji that gets a lot of bad rep
for its bulbous and elongated purple appearance is the
eggplant 🍆. So much so that it was labelled the “most Notable
Emoji” in 2015. The majority of use for this emoji
