My hypothesis is that since japanese are used to characters representing entire ideas, their use of emojis may be more advanced than in other cultures.
Are there any popular slang usages of emoji to represent a word, rather than a general idea? For example, in english one might use the eggplant emoji to represent a phallus. I’m sure examples like that exist in japan, I’m not interested in that so much.
An example of what I’m imagining is like using 草 in place of “lmao”. Are there examples like this where an emoji has become the popular character instead?
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🍆 just means eggplant over here. From the people I’ve talked to, they’re always completely shocked when I mention that’s *pretty much the only time an American would use that emoji
> My hypothesis is that since japanese are used to characters representing entire ideas, their use of emojis may be more advanced than in other cultures.
Seeing as the word *emoji* is literally Japanese, you may just be right about this
I also find the 草 one so interesting lol. You go from 笑 (laugh) to wwww which looks like grass to 草. I feel like that one is pretty unique. Certainly you can sometimes reply with just an emoji the way you can in English, like 🙏 can be like ありがとうございます or お願いします or すみません/ごめんね depending on the situation. One that seems like kind of a different meaning is eg 💁♀️ which means こちら, whereas in English I feel like it looks more like a half shrug or something. 💦 can be used for すみません and things like that too iirc. There are also the kanji emojis like 🈳㊗️🈶🈚️🈵 etc. then there’s also the blood type ones related to blood type personality superstitions 🅰️🅱️🆎🅾️. 🆖 meaning not allowed/no good is also pretty Japan-specific I feel. Another kanji one is 済 for like “read” (ie I read your message) or 了 short for 了解. There’s a lot more but that’s just what I could think of for now. Any corrections welcome as I’m not a native speaker 🙏
Using too much emoji in a sentence is considered tacky. It’s called “ojisan koubun” (old man syntax)
An example will look like this:
お疲れ様〜(^o^)🎵今日はどんな一日だっタ😘❗❓僕は、すごく心配だよ(^▽^;)😱💦😰そんなときは、美味しいもの食べて、元気出さなきゃだネ😆❗
Japanese usually use LINE, so we just use stamps/stickers. Those are faster and easier.
Just going to ramble because the top comment is already very good.
Maybe your first statement is correct, but looking at other pictographic languages they don’t seem to use emoji as much.
Emoji was created in Japan, all of the original iPhone emoji are imported from Japan (which is why there are Japanese food, love hotels, and Japanese cultural holiday emojis!). When I was using a US flip phone I had to type everything out which was dreadful but in Japan their phones had emoji which could be used to convey more info without more words. I’m guessing that early phone culture and a love for cute things like the heart, star and smile emojis really solidified emojis use in japan.