Are Emoji’s replacing languages?

How emoji’s are transforming the way we communicate.

In this day in age many of us communicate with one another via technology and the most common being the smartphone. The smartphone allows us to create spreadsheets, record videos and even perform language translation whether that is French translation or Spanish translation. Virtually all adults today own or have access to a smartphone at any given time. Our smartphones have somewhat become like our best friend who carries out our every thought out action in a virtual sense (apart from when your phone crashes). People would risk breaking their hand or leg to save their precious iPhone in a tumble. Our smartphones are used as alarms to wake us up in the morning and sometime put us to bed via listening to soothing music on apps such as YouTube and Soundcloud. Our smartphones virtually do anything we tell or ask them to and even speak back to us via extensions such as Ok Google or Siri.

With new smartphones being released every 6 months or so, there seems to be an increasing wave of different communication tools which have and are making big impacts on how we communicate whether that is the development of language translation apps or speech assisted messaging the latest wave of virtual communication is via emoji’s (emoticons). For those of you who do not know what emoji’s are which the majority of you will, they are the little images you find on your smartphone that help you to describe your mood in the form of an image. If you own an iPhone or Android phone you will notice hundreds of emoji’s to choose from ranging from facia expressions whether happy or sad to birthday balloons and cake. 

Emoji’s are so big right now that even todays celebrities have gone to the extent of cashing in on the craze by creating their own emoji’s. Take Kim Kardashian for example who recently “broke the apple app store” with the release of her ‘Kimoji’ emoji’s in late 2015 which she most likely made a few million $ from and most recently the comedian Kevin hart announced he is to release his own emoji’s on the app store stating “My Emoji App will be the Emoji App of all Emoji Apps”.

Facial expression and body language can overcome any language barriers and that is exactly what emojis have done. Nowadays when you text you almost feel obliged to use some type of emoji to describe how you feel and this has led to some campaigners proposing emojis that reflect women in more professional roles which in the current ‘emoji world’ is dominated by men. The Google employees who backed this stated that “We believe this will empower young women (the heaviest emoji users), and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world.“

With the emoji craze now being just a normal everyday thing to use, will the need for translation services be gone. Well probably not but they sure will continue to play a big part on how we communicate.

Here’s an emoji filled song that you may recognise. Comment below if you do.

Image Source: Reddit user kelseyog via Imgur