It’s World Emoji Day on 17th July! Although smiley faces are common features of text messages and Twitter exchanges, over a third of adults believe that emojis are ruining the English language. New research suggests that emojis could be responsible for the deterioration of English and presumably of other languages, as people turn to pictures instead of words. But is the English language really in decline – and are emojis to blame?

 

The Influence of Emojis

A study by YouTube into the use of emojis and their perceived influence on the English language shows that 94% of adults believe there has been a steady decline in proper English language usage with 75% of the correspondents claiming young people are main culprits.

Is the English language really in decline – are are teenagers to blame? Well, no.

Young people’s language usage is no better or worse than older people’s language usage. Languages change over time and younger people’s usage reflects this. Change is not synonymous with decline.

We could also argue over exactly what constitutes ‘proper English’ in the first place.

We should also note that this latest research is only an opinion poll, not a linguistics analysis.

The language is not ‘in decline’ and emojis are not to blame for poor language usage. Emojis are a fun and useful communication tool. They can sometimes be used in the place of a word, usually a noun phrase, but they have no grammar of their own.

Some people may even think emojis improve communication by adding emotion and a dose of fun to our informal writing.

 

The Change or Decline of Language

For example, an emoji of a strawberry acts in place of the word strawberry. This doesn’t mean we don’t know the word ‘strawberry’. Although, this could actually be useful for non-native speakers who can’t remember the word for ‘strawberry’! 🍓

Chris McGovern, the chairman of the group called Campaign for Real Education, declared: “There has unquestionably been quite a serious decline in young people’s ability to use the English language and write properly punctuated English. We are moving in a direction of cartoon and picture language, which inevitably will affect literacy.”

McGovern claims: “Children will always follow the path of least resistance. Emoji convey a message, but this breeds laziness. If people think ‘all I need to do is send a picture’, this dilutes language and expression.”

We think McGovern does not give enough credit to children or emoji users in general. Many children enjoy learning new words and use many rich and varied modes of expression – but they also enjoy using emojis.

When a person chooses to use a picture to communicate, it doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate written language. Seeing pictures surely has no effect on the ability of people to understand or use words.

What is the Plural of Emoji?

A side issue when discussing emojis is the question of the correct way to pluralise the word ’emoji’.

The word emoji comes from the Japanese ‘e’ roughly meaning picture (絵) and ‘moji’  roughly meaning character or letter (文字). So with this Japanese origin, emoji would be the plural of emoji.

However, in common English usage, ’emojis’ tends to be the most popular plural choice. This is because it feels clearer, less ambiguous and fits in line with the usual English language rule of adding an ‘s’ to form most plurals. We choose to use the plural ’emojis’ because of this.

Pluralising Foreign Words in English

You can see the same issue with other words of foreign origin and English speakers’ seemingly random decisions regarding the plural form.

We tend to say ‘tsunamis’ as a plural of the Japanese ‘tsumani’ (when it should really be ‘tsunami’). We also say ‘stadiums’ as the plural of ‘stadium’ (when it should really be ‘stadia’ due to its Latin origin) and ‘data’ for both the singular and plural form, avoiding the correct but pretentious-sounding ‘datum’.

However, we happily use the word ‘sushi’ is a plural form of the tasty Japanese fish dish (never ‘sushis’). It seems the deciding factor is how familiar we are with a word and a language – and if the word feels culturally-bound to its country of origin.

For example, perhaps we feel that ‘sushi’ is so heavily Japanese, the word should stay grammatically Japanese when used in English.

However, the word ’emoji’ feels universal and not bound to Japanese culture, so most non-Japanese speaking English speakers treat it as an English word and add the usual ‘s’ to pluralise it, so it becomes ’emojis’.

 

World Emoji Day

July 17th is the unofficial World Emoji Day, a global celebration of emoji. You can join in the activities and celebrations on social media using the hashtag #WorldEmojiDay.

This specific day was chosen because July 17th is the day displayed on the icon in the Google, Apple and JoyPixel calendars emojis.

This day also serves to highlight the annual World Emoji Awards, which determines the winners of the award for best new emoji, most anticipated emoji and excellence in emoji use!

Royal fans will also be celebrating on this day because 17th July is the birthday of Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

Whatever you do, make sure you use plenty of emojis in your communications on World Emoji Day!

 

Share you thoughts on emojis

What do you think? Are emojis ruining the English language? Are emojis ruining all languages?

Can the act of seeing a pictural representation of a word affect your understanding of written words?

What are your favourite and least favourite emojis?

How do you pluralise ’emoji’? Do you like the English ’emojis’ or the Japanese ’emoji’ for the plural form?

Share your thoughts in the comments and vote in our poll 😃