Do you speak Emoji?

A lament among older people is that young people today cannot string together a complete sentence. When asked a question, the young person will reply in a series of grunts and groans, peppered with a few words here and there. No wonder companies still invest heavily in public speaking skills for employees.

Let us now look at the written word. The majority of our communication today is by SMS or short messaging service. Whether you use a messaging app(lication) or conventional SMS, each piece of communication is probably going to be around 140 characters or less (Tweets included). It is bad enough that text language is a whole new field of learning, now we add Emoji, which is defined as:

a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication.

Contrary to popular belief, Emoji-speak is not the domain of the younger crowd. The people who send me emoticons and stickers are generally over 50 years old! While I do use some icons, I have yet to discover the whole lot of pictures and their meanings. I suppose there are so many puzzled people like me in the world. Hence this online Emoji dictionary!

Has Emoji-speak become a new language? I do not know, neither do I want to speculate.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Emoji could well be the epitome of this idiom! :)