Word of the Year 😢

Back around the first part of October, I rambled on here about punctuation and touched a bit on how people no longer use correct punctuation, but don’t even rite or spel very gud… what with the texting and all.

Well, apparently even I didn’t realize the extent of the movement (problem?) — every year the Oxford English Dictionary chooses a Word of the Year. And guess what? This year’s  Word of the Year isn’t even a word!! Both you faithful readers remember that in October, I mentioned something called “emoji.” The Oxford English Dictionary chose the 2015 Word of the Year to be — a “smiley” face with tears — 😢.
Now does that look like a word to you? It doesn’t have any letters! Words are made up of letters! According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the chosen word “best reflects the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.” Good grief!

The term emoji comes from the Japanese e meaning “picture” and mojo meaning “letter” or “character.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Emojis are no longer the preserve of texting teens. Instead, they have been embraced as a nuanced form of expression, and one which can cross language barriers.”

In some ways I blame Apple for this movement — back in 2011 they added a readily accessible emoji keyboard to iOS 5 for the iPhone. I thought it was silly then and I still do. Emojis look like cartoons of faces, flags, food, symbols, vehicles, , etc, From what I can tell, the intent was to illustrate a point, but now they seem to be used to replace words altogether at least when we communicate with each other electronically.
If you have a smartphone (who doesn’t) emoji are available to you as an optional written language, like English, French or Arabic. On my iPhone, the emoji keyboard is right between the Dutch and Estonian keyboards.  I’ve heard, but am not interested enough to do my normal extensive research, that the entire text of Moby Dick has been translated into emoji.

If communicating (accurately) with each other isn’t hard enough, we’ve now invented a whole new confusing way to “communicate” with each other. We now have a new language or vocabulary to tell people we love them, they’ve made us sad, that we’re laughing or job well done.
I suppose that for the modern world, picking the “Tears of Joy” emoji is a good choice.
We all express our thoughts and feelings in different ways, but today when most people seem to have trouble with face to face or even voice communications, maybe this is the perfect way to send those thoughts/feelings to that special someone and it be understood completely.
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