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Are there localized "fonts" for emoji? i.e. Could Apple display the chart in green on iPhones with western system languages, and red on iPhones with Japanese se

Are there localized "fonts" for emoji? i.e. Could Apple display the chart in green on iPhones with western system languages, and red on iPhones with Japanese set as the language? Surely this is not the only example where different cultures conceptualize the concepts behind emoji differently. Another (potentially touchy) example would be automatically adding / removing a hijab for emoji featuring women in Arabic iPhones.

devmunchies 5y ago
my thoughts exactly. another example would be the "Japanese post office"[1] which has a symbol "〒" for japanese postal mark. There is a "european post office"[2] emoji as well with a brass horn on it. Both are meaningless to North and South Americans (correct me if I'm wrong). [1]: https://emojipedia.org/japanese-post-office/ https://emojipedia.org/japanese-post-office/ [2]: https://emojipedia.org/european-post-office/ https://emojipedia.org/european-post-office/ note: notice how /european-post-office redirects to /post-office
- bee_rider 5y ago
  The Japanese post office symbol could almost be a Tesla dealership, to American eyeballs.
paxys 5y ago
The answer to this is kinda complicated. In general terms, it is Apple's OS, and they can do whatever they want on it – so yes, they could display a green chart in some countries. I don't think any platform does something like this today, but it wouldn't be too crazy to add. If we want to talk standards, the Unicode Consortium defines the emoji set as well as loose guidelines on how they should be displayed. The platform implementing them is free to choose the specific designs and pixels, however, so nothing wrong with a red or green chart (or both). Going into technical details, an emoji is a unicode character (or set of characters). There can't be different "emoji languages" since emoji is a language. There can be fonts that render different emojis differently, but it would be interesting/weird to interplay that with regular text fonts that you may otherwise use in the same document. And then do you allow users to switch emoji fonts? Or use different emoji fonts at the same time in the same block of text?
- pornel 5y ago
  They already localize them, e.g. in the country iPhones are from the flag of Taiwan is displayed as [x].
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Since iOS 13.1.1 it's triggered both by the hardware region of the device and by the software Locale setting of the user https://hiraku.tw/2019/10/4877/ https://hiraku.tw/2019/10/4877/

devmunchies 5y ago

my thoughts exactly. another example would be the "Japanese post office"[1] which has a symbol "〒" for japanese postal mark. There is a "european post office"[2] emoji as well with a brass horn on it. Both are meaningless to North and South Americans (correct me if I'm wrong). [1]: https://emojipedia.org/japanese-post-office/ https://emojipedia.org/japanese-post-office/ [2]: https://emojipedia.org/european-post-office/ https://emojipedia.org/european-post-office/ note: notice how /european-post-office redirects to /post-office

bee_rider 5y ago
The Japanese post office symbol could almost be a Tesla dealership, to American eyeballs.

paxys 5y ago

The answer to this is kinda complicated. In general terms, it is Apple's OS, and they can do whatever they want on it – so yes, they could display a green chart in some countries. I don't think any platform does something like this today, but it wouldn't be too crazy to add. If we want to talk standards, the Unicode Consortium defines the emoji set as well as loose guidelines on how they should be displayed. The platform implementing them is free to choose the specific designs and pixels, however, so nothing wrong with a red or green chart (or both). Going into technical details, an emoji is a unicode character (or set of characters). There can't be different "emoji languages" since emoji is a language. There can be fonts that render different emojis differently, but it would be interesting/weird to interplay that with regular text fonts that you may otherwise use in the same document. And then do you allow users to switch emoji fonts? Or use different emoji fonts at the same time in the same block of text?

pornel 5y ago
They already localize them, e.g. in the country iPhones are from the flag of Taiwan is displayed as [x].
- Lammy 5y ago
  Since iOS 13.1.1 it's triggered both by the hardware region of the device and by the software Locale setting of the user https://hiraku.tw/2019/10/4877/ https://hiraku.tw/2019/10/4877/