Some are used to express emotions but many are not: food items, animals, landmarks, activities, etc. I think the majority do not have clear emotional referents. The original set introduced in Unicode 6.0 included things like ROASTED SWEET POTATO and TOKYO TOWER.
On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Philippe Verdy <verd...@wanadoo.fr> wrote: > Today's Japanese emojis are (for most of them) recent inventions; may be > there are some earlier tracks in Japanese comics, but you may as well find > them in comics of America or Europe since the about the 1940's. > > All these icons were *later* renamed emojis in English and Unicode, but > there's a long history of using icons for such emotions Look at the little > heart drawn near the signature on an handwritten letter or discrete > messages, or similar symbols carved by lovers on walls and trees. Or long > before as a sign of recognition such as the fish for the first Christians in > the Roman Empire, or even before in some hieroglyphic inscriptions in antic > Egyptian, Mayan, and Chinese civilizations since Bronze Age or before. > > In fact you could also add all the symbols (not necessarily with religious > meaning) found on graves for expressing that the remaining family of friend > is missing the defunct. > You could also add the similar symbols on jewelry for showing we love > someone, or warrior paintings on faces. > > The modern Japanese Emojis were not the first pictograpic signs to express > emotions (even if now they have been extended to many other things and they > are now widespreading the rest of the world with these extensions). Still > their main usage remains for emotions ; starting in the 1970's these were > ASCII art symbols such as the famous :-) > > > > 2016-02-29 23:24 GMT+01:00 Asmus Freytag (t) <asmus-...@ix.netcom.com>: >> >> On 2/29/2016 1:55 PM, Philippe Verdy wrote: >> >> . Well emojis were initially designed to track amotions and form a sort of >> new language, >> >> >> E-moji means "picture-character" in Japanese, has nothing to do (at first) >> with emotions. >> >> A./ > >
