July 17 is World Emoji Day, the holiday dedicated to the cute little faces that we use every day on smartphones to communicate, here is their story
Smiling, sad, angry. Nowadays we communicate also, if not mainly, thanks to the funny faces. Especially on instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. And today, July 17, 2018, is the feast of emoji, which are celebrated around the world with the World Emoji Day.
To share with other fans of emoticons and smilies our party to emoji we can use, on major social platforms such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, the hashtag created ad hoc #WorldEmojiDay. For those who do not know, the creator of emoji is Scott Fahlman, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. The day Scott launched the first smilies to communicate in a nice way he would have never imagined to gather such a great success among all Internet users around the world. A success that in part has also changed the way we communicate in written form on PCs and smartphones.
Why is the world emoji day celebrated on July 17?
Why of all the days available in a year to celebrate emoji was chosen July 17? Simple, the World Emoji Day is celebrated on this date because it is the same one that appears in the emoticon that marks the calendar. If you notice among the various emoji that we have on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger the icon that indicates the calendar shows a date that is July 17. The first smiley face was sent in 1982 through Arpanet, the progenitor of the Internet. The first instead to design emoji with articulated designs as we know them today was the Japanese Shigetaka Kurita. While currently the Unicode consortium is in charge of creating standards and approving new images among the various lists of emoticons we use every day. The World Emoji Day was established for the first time on July 17, 2014 by Jeremy Burge who is also the founder of emojipedia.org, which as the name implies is a kind of Wikipedia for emoji.
Statistics and trivia about emoji
What do you think was the most sent smiley face in the world in 2017 on our smartphones via Facebook? If you're thinking of the emoji with tears in your eyes for laughter, you're on the right track. The same emoji to indicate a thunderous laugh was established as word of the year in 2015 by the Oxford English Dictionary. In Italy, however, in 2017, as well as in Spain, the most sent emoji on instant messaging apps was the smiley face that sends a kiss. While in France it is the wink emoticon the most sent by Internet users.
A curiosity: but do we say the emoji or the emoji? At the moment, according to the Accademia della Crusca, both versions are acceptable, even if it would be more correct, given the Japanese origin of the word, to use the masculine. However, it must be said that online there is a greater use of the feminine variant. According to several linguists, emoji are the first language in the world and the most used by mankind. It is also the fastest developing communication method in the history of human idioms. These cute little faces have also influenced culture, both pop and art. For example, there are entire books translated into emoji, such as Pinocchio, Moby Dick and even the Bible. And there's even an Emoji Movie. New York's MOMA museum purchased the first packet of emoji (from 170 smilies) created in the 1990s and displays it in its halls as if it were a real work of art.