Emojis are so widely used now that it’s hard to imagine casual written text without emojis punctuating sentences and easily conveying tone.
However, according to the language experts at Babbel, emojis have only been widely used for just under 15 years meaning that us old cringe millennials were very much in the minority when we were littering our MSN chats with various emojis.
HuffPost UK spoke with Noël Wolf, cultural expert at language learning platform Babbel to learn more about the history of emojis and how they became so popular.
So, what exactly are emojis?
Wolf explained: “On a basic level, emoji are pictograms, symbols that directly represent the objects they depict. While they are sometimes compared to ancient writing systems like Egyptian hieroglyphics, this comparison isn’t entirely accurate.
“Hieroglyphics often correspond to specific words, phrases, or sounds, whereas emoji can convey various meanings and even function as punctuation, making them more open to interpretation.”
Of course, we know that Apple and other operating systems produce new emojis frequently, so they are always evolving, but where did they actually start from?
Wolf said that the origins of modern emoji can be traced back to the 1980s when American computer scientist Scott Fahlman proposed the use of smiley faces :-) and :-( in emails to convey tone.
Wolf added: “These emoticons are considered the ancestors of today’s emoji, which are more graphic and not limited to text characters.”
Emojis as we know them today can actually be traced back to Japan
Wolf explained that in the 1990s, Shigetaka Kurita, working for the Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo, created a set of 176 pictograms to enhance communication within character-limited messages.
“The word emoji comes from the Japanese words for ‘picture’ (e) and ‘character’ (moji). Kurita drew inspiration from various sources, including pictograms and manga.”
Incredible.
2010 is when emojis really took off universally
Wolf said: “The real breakthrough for emoji came in 2010 when they were incorporated into the Unicode standard, allowing them to be used universally across different devices and platforms.
“Today, there are over 3,600 emoji, and 92% of the online population use them in their communications*. The Unicode Consortium, which oversees this standard, reviews public proposals for new emoji and decides on their inclusion based on specific criteria.”
Emojis came into common lexicon very quickly, with the tears of joy emoji being Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2015.
Emojis are here to stay
Emojis are so embedded in language now that Wolf believes that they’re not going anywhere.
They said: “Like all forms of language, emoji will continue to evolve and reflect societal changes.
“New emoji will be introduced, mirroring current themes and topics and people will keep finding creative ways to use them, assigning new meanings and supplementing their communication with these versatile little pictograms.”
Beautiful.