World Emoji Day

World Emoji Day

Did you know that there's a World Emoji Day? Well, there is ... and it's on July 17! surprise 

Do the preparation task first. Then read the article and do the exercises.

Preparation

Emoji is the fastest growing language in history. Five billion emojis are sent every day, just on Facebook Messenger. They're appearing in some surprising places too. One court judge in England used a smiley face emoji smiley in a document to make it easy to explain the court's decision to children. It's not surprising that there's a day to celebrate emojis, but what do you know about its organisers, the website Emojipedia?

Know your emoji

The company Unicode actually creates the computer code that give us emojis, but Emojipedia is where you can learn exactly what each emoji means and how to use it. Most of us probably know and use the most popular emojis, like the classic smiley face, heart or the smiling face with tears of laughter. But if you want to grow your emoji vocabulary, you can use Emojipedia to find out new ways to speak emoji.

So, for example, go to Emojipedia and type in sick and it will give you several options. If you mean ill, as in the American English phrase I'm sick, you can use the face with a thermometer or a mask. Or maybe you mean I feel sick, like in British English to mean to vomit. Since 2017, when Unicode added the vomiting emoji, you can choose from two green faces. Or maybe you're just feeling a bit dizzy, in which case you can choose the confused, dizzy-looking face. If you wanted to talk about hospital or a medical condition, Emojipedia has also suggested a syringe or a pill. So you can see with just one real word, sick, you have a lot of emojis to choose from to explain exactly what you mean!

New, inclusive emojis

Unicode adds new emojis all the time. They might take time to be available on all platforms and phones, but you will see them immediately on Emojipedia. An important improvement to the emoji list, which had 2,823 emojis after its 2018 update, is to make the emojis more diverse. Since 2015, when Apple added five different emoji skin colours, people have been able to choose how to represent themselves best. The 2018 update added red hair, Afro hair and a bald face, all in a range of skin colours, but that update didn't go far enough either. Many people asked for new emojis to represent deaf and blind people, and people with physical or invisible disabilities.

Save the date!

There's some emoji history behind how Emojipedia chose 17 July to celebrate World Emoji Day. Check out the calendar emoji on Emojipedia and look carefully. Can you see the date?

The code for each emoji is the same, but different platforms, like Twitter or Facebook, for example, design their emojis in different ways. When Emojipedia was deciding which day to hold World Emoji Day, only Apple was using a calendar emoji with a date on, 17 July. So they decided to celebrate emojis on 17 July too. Apple chose that date because it was when Apple introduced its iCal calendar feature for Mac in 2002. Now, other platforms have added dates to their calendar emojis. Facebook Messenger uses its launch date of 9 August. Twitter's calendar emoji shows 21 March because that's the date Twitter created its company. It used to show Twitter's launch date, which was 15 July, but that was too close to World Emoji Day's date, so they changed it.

Happy World Emoji Day! 

So, if you want to send someone a message using emoji to celebrate World Emoji day, Emojipedia has plenty to choose from, including six colours of raising hand emojis, five party emojis and two kinds of fireworks. You can even choose a world globe that shows the part of the world you live in. Whichever emojis you choose to celebrate, we wish you Happy World Emoji Day! wink

Discussion

Download

Language level

Average: 4.1 (7 votes)
Do you need to improve your English?
Join thousands of learners from around the world who are making great progress with their English level with our online courses.

Submitted by bawk san aung on Mon, 26/08/2019 - 08:13

Permalink
I like the smile face one. Whenever i use it, i smile at the same time and feel calm and getting courage. By the way, i am smiling now while i am commenting.

Submitted by parisaach on Sat, 10/08/2019 - 10:52

Permalink
Emojis are really necessary to write a message. These days It is really difficult to write a message without emojis. stickers are even more important and helpful. when I send a message in Telegram I always can find veriety of stickers to show my feeling. But when I want to send a message in WhatsApp there isn't enough stickers to express myself. So when the stickers are not available emojis are the best way to show my feeling I usually use emojis to show how much I love somebody for these situations I usually use heart stickers there are several kind of heart stickers around I've used all of them , there also some kind of kiss stikcers, a sticker with two hearts in place of it's eyes and sticker which has three hearts around it's face. the other feeling that I always show with stickers is laughing I mostly use the one which is laughing hard with tears of joy .I mostly use the other ones when something is just a little funny. and I use the ones which just smile to answer something in a pleasing way or to accept something and show happiness. The other stickers that I mostly use are sad stickers I use those when something bad happen to some one. or when I want to show that I am sad for some reasons. Actually I use many stickers and some times when I want to write a formal letter I think It would be better if it was normal to use emojis in formal writings too.

Submitted by yas on Thu, 11/07/2019 - 10:30

Permalink
ok , my favorite emoji is that monkey with his hands in his face , i use it a lot, because i am very sky person and this emoji makes me explain what i feel on that moment . please correct my writing ...

Hello yas

I use that one a lot too! We're very glad to have your comments on LearnEnglish and are happy to help you with specific questions about specific sentences on our pages, but I'm afraid we just don't have the time to correct our users' writing -- we simply have too much other work producing new content for all of you!

All the best

Kirk

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by MNahid on Thu, 18/04/2019 - 13:45

Permalink
hi , i got question and here it is --------Christina Koch, who is currently in space, has her stay onboard extended to an expected record-setting flight of 328 days--- so in this sentence what " has her stay onboard extended means and is " extented " form of passive voice and it is short form of " that is extended " explaining her staying onboard ? .....thanks
Hell MNahid One of the reasons we don't normally comment on sentences from other sources is that they often have something that we can't explain because we wouldn't normally express it in the way it's expressed. The sentence you ask about is one of those. In this case, 'extend' is a good word to express the idea that she will stay in space longer, but I can't really explain the grammar, I'm afraid. By the way, please don't post your questions more than once. It can take several hours before your comments are published, as we revise all comments before they are published on the site. All the best Kirk The LearnEnglish Team
Profile picture for user eirini1984

Submitted by eirini1984 on Thu, 07/02/2019 - 13:56

Permalink
My favorite emoji is the the face which is laughing to tears and the dizzy looking face..