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We love them or we hate them, more than 90% of people use emoji online, and the reach of digital characters even exceeds the scope of English. This makes emoji one of the most universal forms of communication, and World Emoji Day is here to celebrate that.
Today, there are more than 2,800 emoji that you can use to express your plethora of emotions. But like words and phrases in any other language, many emoji can take on connotations beyond what they literally represent.
Take the fishing emoji. In a sample of 571 tweets using the character, Emojipedia found that only 7% of them referred to the actual fruit.
We will let you guess what the other uses were for, and that should be enough to show how much the meanings of emoji can be misinterpreted.
SEE MORE: This dictionary now has an official definition The Emgplant Emoji
Throughout the world, cultural connotations and interpretations of emoji can become even more unclear. In mainland China, the "emoji" waving hand "can be interpreted as breaking a friendship. And in Nigeria, as well as in some Middle Eastern countries, the "thumbs up" emoji can be interpreted as an obscene gesture.
But beyond the interpretations of emoji, it must be noted that many characters are themselves cultural interpretations. – and they can vary from one platform to the other
To explain, let's see the emoji variations of a common dish to many different cultures: dumplings.
You see, all the dumpling emoji do not follow the same shape. Some variants are more like Chinese dumplings with steam or soup, while others may be interpreted as Japanese gyoza, Polish pierogis or Spanish empanadas.
VIEW MORE: Using Smile Emoji at Work Can Send a Message Different Than You Want
Ironically, the artist behind the dumpling emoji has been striving to ensure that the design was intercultural and ambiguous. But companies have the ability to interpret and modify designs as they see fit – that's why emoji are not the same on different devices, apps or social media sites.
This is the case of many new emoji, dozens of which are approved and published by the Unicode Consortium each year. Over time, this will probably be very impressive. But again, no one has ever said that it would be easy to develop a new form of communication
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