
Why emojis are failing to evolve into a form of language - suhastech
https://medium.com/@rdas121/why-emojis-are-failing-to-evolve-into-a-form-of-language-7af656752bfd
======
bane
Emojis/emoticons shouldn't become a form of language, thats because they're
meant to be something else closer to punctuation. They're really in-line
annotation glyphs that add context, meaning and emotion to writing which
enables clarity.

They can almost be thought of as parenthetical asides which are intended by
the writer to aid the reader in understanding tone and emotion in a compact
way.

For example, which form unambiguously conveys sarcasm the best?

"Oh, it's Sam, isn't that great!"

"Oh, it's Sam, isn't that great! (jerk)"

Now replace (jerk) with an appropriate glyph and we're at emojis.

What written language sorely lacks is a standardized update to the punctuation
system we use. We're limited to single digit tone marks and a couple ways of
modifying the text to try to convey a tremendous range of tones and emotions.
We also need a system that does so without using cartoon characters. It's very
hard to convey serious emotional tones with variations of a yellow smiley
face.

Western musical notation has an entire series of annotation marks to inform
style on top of the basic "sentence" structure of the notes. It seems that
writing also could use something similar.

~~~
empath75
We already have a category for what emoji are: pictographs.

~~~
marxidad
That's an orthographic category, not a functional category, for which
"interjections" comes close. They are also similar to attitudinals in Lojban.

------
torgoguys
This isn't the first time I've heard someone throw out the idea of emojis as a
possible language. It seems popular in certain circles, including a couple of
different podcasts I listen to.

Why do people insist on trying to shoehorn emojis into the realm of being a
whole languange? _Let emojis be emojis._ They're not a language. They're not
punctuation. They are how we use them.

I'm not a huge fan, but they can be fun and are quite good at conveying
certain emotions and empathy. Plus other uses. Why must they be pushed towards
use as something that they're not?

~~~
amelius
Also, how can emojis evolve into a language when they are prescribed by big
companies, which provide few updates? Perhaps the set of emojis should be
crowdsourced, and we might see some interesting language phenomena.

~~~
marxidad
Standardization by a small group can have a positive effect on a language's
evolution. Look at what Webster's dictionary did for English spellings and
common usages.

------
rabboRubble
If your base language is pictographic (ex. Chinese/Japanese) then emoji blend
into language. The only problem, not as easy to type "emoji" as it is to type
Chinese or Japanese.

For a European language, not so much.

------
hobarrera
The idea was never that emoji evolve into their own language, but rather
compliment our exiting ones -- which they're doing quite well IMHO.

~~~
azeirah
Yeah this is a bit weird, emojis are closer to "new words" than a "new
language"

------
nerdponx
Aside from tongue-in-cheek projects like "translating" Moby Dick into emoji
[1], did anyone really think they would become a standalone form of
communication?

1: [http://emojidick.com/](http://emojidick.com/)

~~~
emodendroket
Wow, $200 for a bound copy of something translated by Mechanical Turk, without
any preview at all to see if the content is the least bit interesting. Sounds
like a wise use of money.

~~~
mecredis
Author of Emoji Dick here. The $200 price tag is that high because its a one-
off print-on-demand of an 800 page color laser hardcover book. I would LOVE to
find a way to produce these cheaper (even do another edition) but haven't had
the time to get a publisher / deal / etc. together.

~~~
emodendroket
Sure. But why can't I preview, say, the first chapter?

~~~
mecredis
I never really seriously considered it. Made the book and the page before this
was really all that common online. Maybe I'll A/B test it to see if it
generates more sales :)

~~~
nerdponx
How about a digital copy for less?

------
qwertyuiop924
Tom Scott talked about this when he and Matt Grey made Emojli, the Emoji-only
messenger. You can find their talk about it at
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=GsyhGHUEt-k](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GsyhGHUEt-k)

However, given that HN is startup central, note that if you are involved in
startups and easily offended, you might want to give this video a miss.

------
amelius
By the way, I'm still missing the "face-palm" emoji in Whatsapp. Also missing
is an emoji for "not impressed".

~~~
hobarrera
‍[http://pastebin.com/BvHAx43i](http://pastebin.com/BvHAx43i) (couldn't paste
it here)

Missing on your OS probably, since emojis are not Whatsapp-specific.

~~~
gifsawww
Whatsapp uses iOS emoji on all platforms

~~~
hobarrera
iOS has facepalm emoji (I actually copy-pasted the above from my iPhone's
native emoji keyboard).

------
faitswulff
This reminds me of my girlfriend's tale of her Chinese friend who married an
Middle Eastern man. They communicate primarily through emojis, as they're not
proficient enough with their shared language, English, to communicate.

I wouldn't take this as a counterpoint to the headline, as they don't seem to
communicate very effectively.

XD

~~~
ggambetta
I wonder what's the thought process whereby you marry someone you can't
communicate effectively with!

~~~
faitswulff
She had apparently dated a Chinese man for 10 years and wanted to change it up
rather drastically by dating a foreigner.

I...don't know if there was a thought process involved.

------
makecheck
They are clearly used so they can’t be a failure.

Perhaps it won’t be long before we see emojis sprinkled throughout printed
books (perhaps similar to TV shows popping up texting bubbles). If these icons
have value as a way to express something in an interesting way, they probably
belong in literature too.

------
nkkollaw
I really don't get this.

Why would emojis evolve into a form of language? It doesn't make any sense
whatsoever.

------
mettamage
I didn't read the article.

I came here to comment the fun tidbit that emoticons do follow Zipf's law. I
know this from emoticons, because I mined some data from Twitter and plotted
the frequencies.

My guess is that it's the same for emojis :)

------
mecredis
From the post:

 _Since emojis often bear graphic resemblances to our real faces, the
understanding has often been that there would be no problems in interpreting
them, and that the sender and the recipient would agree on such
interpretation._

As someone fairly immersed in the emoji community, this is a strawman argument
(i.e., no one really tries to argue this).

People love and use emoji not in spite of their ambiguity but rather because
of it.

Even Unicode encourages emoji to have multiple meanings:

[http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html](http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html)

 _Does the candidate emoji have notable metaphorical references or symbolism?_

And from their FAQ:

[http://www.unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html](http://www.unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html)

 _Do emoji characters have single semantics?

A: No. Because emoji characters are treated as pictographs, they are encoded
in Unicode based primarily on their general appearance, not on an intended
semantic._

Many people _want_ to think there are some folks out there like myself who are
seriously arguing Emoji are a language, but this isn't really true. And I say
that as the author of a book called "How to Speak Emoji". The thing is, it's a
humor book designed to be sold in Urban Outfitters. It's not a real language
guide.

If you're curious about more nuanced takes on how emoji are actually being
used, here are some good resources:

Tyler Schnoebelen's talk at Emojicon:
[http://www.slideshare.net/TylerSchnoebelen/emoji-
linguistics](http://www.slideshare.net/TylerSchnoebelen/emoji-linguistics)

Gretchen McCulloch on how Emoji aren't really threatening English:
[http://the-toast.net/2016/06/29/a-linguist-explains-emoji-an...](http://the-
toast.net/2016/06/29/a-linguist-explains-emoji-and-what-language-death-
actually-looks-like/)

The tl;dr: journalists / bloggers would love to get someone to argue that
emoji are a language so they can "Well, actually" them, but the truth is this
isn't really happening much.

However, some of us are deeply curious about whether our usage of emoji are
evolving language-like characteristics and grammars. See this recent research
on whether emoji have their own syntax:

[https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/12/07/do-
emojis...](https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/12/07/do-emojis-have-
their-own-syntax/)

Note that a distinct syntax is probably necessary but not sufficient for emoji
to be considered a language.

------
circa
Long live Wing Dings!

------
sigzero
Because NOBODY wants emojis to be a form of language?

------
dvh
Because there is no emoji for "because"

