Emoji Is the New Language?
A friend sends me emails, and when I open them, butterflies flit about the screen. Better than moths, perhaps, but I am petrified that such electronic livestock will introduce viruses into my computer, like foxes bringing rabies through the Channel tunnel. So it was with an anxious heart that I read a news report that claimed emoji is the fastest growing language in Britain.
An emoji is not a cute creature from Star Wars like an Ewok (which does have a language of its own). Nor is an emoji the same as an emoticon. An emoticon is a portmanteau word combining emotion + icon, such as a smiley face or winking face (often a troublingly ambiguous hint). Emojis find their origin in e for electronic and moji, a Japanese word for “picture”. They go beyond emotion. As well as shiny faces that gush shiny tears, emojis run to little pictures of guitars, aeroplanes, DVDs, bikinis, pills and cocktails with umbrellas in them. You begin to divine the sort of world we are dealing with.
Andy Murray tweets emojis ahead of his wedding
I would like to say in a loud voice (without the aid even of an emoticon) that emojis do not make up a language and more than that they are a bad sign. By a “bad sign” I mean things like having Love and Hate tattooed on your knuckles or wearing a tie outside a sweater. To sport such things does not encourage, for example, an invitation to accompany your teenage children on a walking holiday.
There is, though, a silly claim that Moby-Dick has been translated into the emoji language, under the title Emoji Dick. The title is a good joke, but even one sentence from the novel (already disappointingly uphill work in English) is incomprehensible in emoji. It makes Finnegans Wake seem like a conversation between old friends. It would be easier to understand Moby-Dick translated into smoke-signals or written in tiny letters on the icing of a succession of cakes from Ulster bakers.
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