@lain Now that you say it that way it makes more sense. This is one Japanese thing that arguably shouldn't have left the islands (and I'm speaking as an anime fan who is about to re-watch Nobunaga the Fool).

@skquinn @lain
Emoji doesn't really fit well into the categorization of ideogram either; most of the information an emoji encodes would be non-verbal in a face to face conversation anyhow, and has no conventionally recognized meaning.

I don't use them much, but I've found them occasionally useful as a low-bandwidth alternative to posting a surreal semi-related image. Since they first appeared in the 90s, this makes sense.

@skquinn @lain @enkiv2 I think it's a feature that you can't tell that :pray: means high five, hands clasped in prayer, or a polite greeting (i.e. wai)

also I have to tell you, English is actually in the exact same situation as Japanese, but it's much, much, worse: it relies on not one but *two* other foreign languages for its dense info work, Greek and Latin, but all the metadata is corrupted almost beyond recognition.