An emoji is worth a thousand words

On the day dedicated to the little pictures that save a thousand characters on phone and computer keypads — July 17 — hopefully people remembered that thanks to emojis, the world is going back to the days of unfettered, unlettered visual communication. Language has come full circle from our most ancient ancestors’ parietal art to the graphic novels and emojis of our times, obviating the need for letters, numbers and punctuation marks. As emojis make further inroads into our written communications, the only people who may have reason to grumble are grammarians and pedants, as this mode disregards all rules, and, indeed, language itself.

The purists could, conceivably, have retained some clout if emoticons prevailed as they use letters, numbers and punctuation marks. But they are now increasingly irrelevant as in the expanding emoji world there is simply no need to know words such as hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia or its correct spelling, much less devise a pictographic equivalent for it.

Esperanto has been trying for 133 years to become the world’s preferred auxiliary language, but in one-eighth of that time — especially since 2010 — emojis have already found their way into well over 90% of online communication. With its ability to express emotion as well as an idea, emojis are clearly the text-best thing to verbal conversation.