emoji
emoji – sostantivo numerabile (plurale emoji o emojis)
‘Tears of joy’ is an emoji Charles Dickens would have relished.
The following emojis are from the latest version of Android 6.0.1 released December 2015.
The savvy and inventive are now sending entire communications, both public and private and on multiple platforms, in emoji.
Emoji is now the fastest growing language in the UK and evolving faster than ancient forms of communication, such as hieroglyphics.
La scelta dell’Oxford Dictionary di promuovere un emoji (la ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ che indica una risata a crepapelle, fino alle lacrime) a ‘parola dell’anno 2015’ ha scatenato polemiche e commenti a non finire, come senz’altro era nelle intenzioni dei curatori dell’Oxford. C’è chi sostiene che un emoji non è una parola ma un pittogramma e che definirla tale è un errore, mentre secondo altri si può parlare a buon diritto di un vero linguaggio emoji. Il termine emoji è senza dubbio una parola, tra l’altro una parola che ha trovato rapidamente posto nella lingua inglese (e non solo). Con i loro colori vivaci, la grafica attraente e la vasta gamma a disposizione, gli emoji hanno conosciuto un’impennata di popolarità in seguito alla loro inclusione nella maggior parte degli smartphone.
Origini del termine
È dalla fine del decennio degli anni ’90 che il termine emoji circola in Giappone, Paese in cui è nato (da e, cioè immagine + moji, cioè lettera, carattere). La somiglianza con la parola emoticon (emotion + icon) è solo una coincidenza ma probabilmente ne ha favorito la diffusione.
emoji – countable noun (plural emoji or emojis)
‘Tears of joy’ is an emoji Charles Dickens would have relished.
The following emojis are from the latest version of Android 6.0.1 released December 2015.
The savvy and inventive are now sending entire communications, both public and private and on multiple platforms, in emoji.
Emoji is now the fastest growing language in the UK and evolving faster than ancient forms of communication, such as hieroglyphics.
Oxford Dictionaries’ choice of an emoji (‘Face with Tears of Joy’, since you ask) as its ‘Word of the Year’ 2015 provoked a great deal of comment and debate, as no doubt it was intended to do. While many think that an emoji is not a word and that to call it one is something of a category error, others claim that emoji are on the way to becoming a fully fledged language. The term emoji itself is undeniably a word, and one that has quickly found its place in the English language. The actual emojis, with their bright colours, appealing designs and wide range of images, surged in popularity after manufacturers of smartphones started making them available as standard.
Origins
The term emoji started to be used in the late 1990s in Japan and the word itself is Japanese, from e meaning picture + moji meaning letter, character. Its resemblance to the English word emoticon (emotion + icon) is purely coincidental, but may have helped it to spread.
