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I was exactly here yesterday after a discussion with a friend of mine about the meaning of "Face With Steam From Nose" [1]. I work in an academic institute wit

by kensai 10y ago

I was exactly here yesterday after a discussion with a friend of mine about the meaning of "Face With Steam From Nose" [1]. I work in an academic institute with many nationalities and almost all people (of different cultural backgrounds) describe this emoticon as an emoticon showing anger and frustration. Yet the official description in Unicode 6.0 [2] is "face with look of triumph" . Was it simply bad design? [1] http://emojipedia.org/face-with-look-of-triumph/ http://emojipedia.org/face-with-look-of-triumph/ [2] http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-6.0/U60-1F600.pdf http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-6.0/U60-1F600.pdf I am curious, have you found other similar examples?

Freak_NL 10y ago
> Was it simply bad design? No, just a cultural difference. Most of the early emoji in Unicode were drawn from the existing set of emoji already in use in Japanese telecom. As such, these emoji have a strong Japanese cultural bias in their original meanings. One of the goals of Unicode is to be able to encode text from existing encodings. In (informal) Japanese communication these emoji were in use, so Unicode encoded them. Readers of Japanese comics are probably familiar with most of these facial expressions, including that triumphant look. The Samsung one on emojipedia is probably closest to that emoji's archetype.
- kensai 10y ago
  Indeed, the Samsung one was the only one I found "triumphant"! ;) But as I said, I asked around our Institute where we are from different nationalities and continents. No one said it was triumphant and actually they were quite surprised of its "official" description.
1_player 10y ago
I don't have an answer, but emojis seem to have been inspired by the Japanese culture. Perhaps steam from the nose is a common Japanese representation of victory? I get that emojis were first invented for use on Japanese phones, but I don't understand why they kept them Japanese oriented when merged into Unicode? There's ideographs [1], acronyms that are relevant only to JP [2] and fish on a pole [3] Surely we could've made better use of the Unicode space to use a common set of symbol shared by all cultures. 1: http://emojipedia.org/squared-cjk-unified-ideograph-7981/ http://emojipedia.org/squared-cjk-unified-ideograph-7981/ 2: http://emojipedia.org/squared-ng/ http://emojipedia.org/squared-ng/ 3: http://emojipedia.org/carp-streamer/ http://emojipedia.org/carp-streamer/
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  > Surely we could've made better use of the Unicode space […] There is plenty of space. Keep in mind that one of the goals of Unicode is to be able to represent existing corpora of text by means of a global standard. Emoji were in widespread use in Japanese mobile phones long before smartphones existed; that alone legitimises their presence in the Unicode standard. Like a dictionary, the Unicode standard is in a large part descriptive rather than prescriptive. It catalogues what is in use, not what ought to be used. However, recent emoji contributions do seem to have been made in the spirit of filling lacunae in the set.
- franciscop 10y ago
  That actually happens a lot with English but native English speakers (or those foreigners with similar langs/cultures) normally don't realize that it is happening. Defining world culture symbols would be pretty hard. If you count by number of people there'd be a lot more Asian cultural things than you would expect.
accountyaccount 10y ago
Japan has a lot of cultural differences in their iconography.
cyxxon 10y ago
I was surprised a lot when Apple changed the grinning face emoji in iOS 10 to a boring smile. For me and my friends the original version was a sort of mischivious smile, but definitely positive. Seems a ton of people had negative connotations with it, and it got voted out by majority opinion. The new one conveys a totally different meaning for me, and as such I have basically stopped using it. I tend to use "Face With Stuck-Out Tongue & Winking Eye" now instead... Also: browsing Emojipedia I just realised that the Smirking Face is supposed to be smirking... I always interpreted it as annoyed or bored... talk about ambiguity...
deleted 10y ago
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by kensai 10y ago

Freak_NL 10y ago

> Was it simply bad design? No, just a cultural difference. Most of the early emoji in Unicode were drawn from the existing set of emoji already in use in Japanese telecom. As such, these emoji have a strong Japanese cultural bias in their original meanings. One of the goals of Unicode is to be able to encode text from existing encodings. In (informal) Japanese communication these emoji were in use, so Unicode encoded them. Readers of Japanese comics are probably familiar with most of these facial expressions, including that triumphant look. The Samsung one on emojipedia is probably closest to that emoji's archetype.

kensai 10y ago
Indeed, the Samsung one was the only one I found "triumphant"! ;) But as I said, I asked around our Institute where we are from different nationalities and continents. No one said it was triumphant and actually they were quite surprised of its "official" description.

1_player 10y ago

I don't have an answer, but emojis seem to have been inspired by the Japanese culture. Perhaps steam from the nose is a common Japanese representation of victory? I get that emojis were first invented for use on Japanese phones, but I don't understand why they kept them Japanese oriented when merged into Unicode? There's ideographs [1], acronyms that are relevant only to JP [2] and fish on a pole [3] Surely we could've made better use of the Unicode space to use a common set of symbol shared by all cultures. 1: http://emojipedia.org/squared-cjk-unified-ideograph-7981/ http://emojipedia.org/squared-cjk-unified-ideograph-7981/ 2: http://emojipedia.org/squared-ng/ http://emojipedia.org/squared-ng/ 3: http://emojipedia.org/carp-streamer/ http://emojipedia.org/carp-streamer/

Freak_NL 10y ago
> Surely we could've made better use of the Unicode space […] There is plenty of space. Keep in mind that one of the goals of Unicode is to be able to represent existing corpora of text by means of a global standard. Emoji were in widespread use in Japanese mobile phones long before smartphones existed; that alone legitimises their presence in the Unicode standard. Like a dictionary, the Unicode standard is in a large part descriptive rather than prescriptive. It catalogues what is in use, not what ought to be used. However, recent emoji contributions do seem to have been made in the spirit of filling lacunae in the set.
franciscop 10y ago
That actually happens a lot with English but native English speakers (or those foreigners with similar langs/cultures) normally don't realize that it is happening. Defining world culture symbols would be pretty hard. If you count by number of people there'd be a lot more Asian cultural things than you would expect.

accountyaccount 10y ago

Japan has a lot of cultural differences in their iconography.

cyxxon 10y ago

I was surprised a lot when Apple changed the grinning face emoji in iOS 10 to a boring smile. For me and my friends the original version was a sort of mischivious smile, but definitely positive. Seems a ton of people had negative connotations with it, and it got voted out by majority opinion. The new one conveys a totally different meaning for me, and as such I have basically stopped using it. I tend to use "Face With Stuck-Out Tongue & Winking Eye" now instead... Also: browsing Emojipedia I just realised that the Smirking Face is supposed to be smirking... I always interpreted it as annoyed or bored... talk about ambiguity...

deleted 10y ago

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