Emoji - World's New Expressions

The expressions of a human heart, sometimes, need more than mere words.

Which is why, when texting, we add a smiley,  a frowny, a winky, a heart, a kiss, or a thumbs-up sign.  

And, of course, flower-bouquets, birthday-cakes, applauding hands, wine-glasses and party-confetti. 

Thanks to ‘emoji’, the wonderful pictograms now available on our mobile phone keyboards, we can now express and impress better.

So, how is the world using these emoji? That is what, SwiftKey, a British App developer company, thought, and conducted a strange new research.

After analysing over 1 billion pieces of emoji data taken from communications made in 16 different languages, they found out some silly, some not-so-silly, and some very startling, facts.

For instance, Australians love to use emoji related to alcohol and drugs. It looks like there, down under, lies a strange fascination among jumping joeys, to be under the influence!  Of emoji, I mean.

Canadians scored highest in categories associated with violence and money, loving the gun and cash! They probably hope that dollars - and not just maple leaves - grow on trees.

Russians, interestingly, used three times as much romantic emoji than the average!  It shows that even if their President doesn’t, well, ‘put in’ much emotion, they still do.

And guess what Arabic speakers used, four times the average? 

Flowers and plants! Yes. Perhaps, living in dry desert areas, the yearning for the flora is probably understandable. 

French, however, is the only language where the famous ‘smiley’ is not number one! They used ‘heart’ four times more than in other languages.

I am not surprised. After all, French hearts are known to beat faster when it comes to love, beauty and relationships. 

Which, brings me to my point; that these emoji, help in strengthening relationships.

Our relationships, I believe, are more online and more virtual now than in all the years that have gone by. And we will be, inevitably, unavoidably, more and more connected, in days ahead.

And the best thing is, we have conquered Distance! And, in a way, even Time.

And though our families and friends are dispersed, all over the world, much more than our earlier generations, we can still communicate with them almost instantly. And these emoji help a lot.

We can say “yes, I like it and I am fine with it”, with just one piece of emoji - a thumbs up sign. 

We can say “I love it a lot” with a heart. If we love it more, we can add more hearts. If we love it even more, we can add, even more hearts in many different colours.

We can send a kiss, we can send a hug, we can send a frown, and well, we can even send a big round of applause without typing a single word! And, a picture, we know, is worth a thousand of them.

I am sure some love stories, in history - like that of  Napoleon and Josephine or of  Queen Victoria and Prince Albert - missed out on the text-romance that current youth have access to. 

If those people, then, had drawn flowers on paper, and put crushed rose petals in envelopes, we can, now, just click on the emoji key, and send the same. 

Anyway, good care must still be taken! Because, if people winked in real life as much as they do while texting, the world would be a pretty creepy place. ;-)