Today, the era when mobile devices has become the most important way for human to communicate, it seems that no mobile users that can live without emojis. As for why most people prefer the name emoji and not emoticon, one could only wonder. We could say that these two evolve into the emojis that we know and love today. The Japanese devise their own version of emoticons called emojis that looks like this: “ (^_^) “ for a happy face, or “ (!_!) “ for a sad face. For example, “:)” means smiley face and is a rose stem.
It’s those letters and symbols combination that represents emotion. Those who follow the linguistic side of technology would remember text emoticons at the early days of emails and chat rooms when the available characters are still limited. Emoticons and EmojisĪfter years of trying and tweaking the written words to be able to include the missing emotion, we devised the next best thing in the form of tiny emojis. It will have different meanings if we say it with a smile and with an angry face. Everything from the intonation, speed, volume, to the facial expressions, are lost in those letter combinations.įor example, the written word “good” could be spoken in many ways. In fact, almost all of the modern technologies that we took for granted such as computer and programming, chatting, emailing, gaming, and even the internet and gadgets, would never be possible without the existence of written language.ĭespite all of the advantages of written language, there’s one thing from spoken language that couldn’t be replicated in the written form: the emotion of the speaker. We can preserve stories, share knowledge to faraway lands, record histories, improve educations, spread religions, etc. The human foray into written language enables us to do something that was unimaginable in the era of spoken language.