3 ms·

Emoji: like Kanji, but without agreed upon semantic meaning or pronunciation!

• TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Or, you could say, "agreed upon semantic meaning" is a work in progress. Except Kanji and other logographic systems since the hieroglyphs don't actually picture a thing directly, so there's no confusion between what's the "agreed upon" meaning and what the image represents at face value.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    That's a fair point I suppose. Kanji started as pictographic too. It's just really strange to me that anyone would choose to add such a complicated feature to language use that they didn't inherit from a time before syllabaries and alphabets.
  • thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > since the hieroglyphs don't actually picture a thing directly Sometimes they do. 龍 is one of my favorites, and it originates as a picture of a dragon - body and legs on the right, head (立) and whiskers (月) on the left. It's a shame that one got simplified.