The Japanese Emoticons and their Specific Meanings

Countries all over the world have different languages, beliefs, traditions, culture, and traits which help us make a distinction of one

country from another. Although they have their differences, still they are similar at some point. Like in using social media sites

particularly Facebook, we all use this site with our similar intentions to connect with other people around the world, to meet new friends and to look for old friends. Whatever reason we have, we all use the

Facebook messenger to converse and with its emoticones para Facebook which is a Spanish translation for emoticons we can now

set a tone for every conversation. If Americans have emoticons, Spanish have emoticones; Japanese has their very own Emoji and

Kaomoji.

Emoji means “picture letter”. They are set of special icons that are invented by Shigetaka Kurita in 1995 which is

made in a small 12x12 pixel picture that were used by the Japanese in sending messages. Almost all Japanese phones

are installed with software that is built with Emoji. It is very Japanese because they even have an emoticon for Japanese foods such as onigiri, dango, curry, and their other cultural things like a traditional looking couple, a

guy bowing in apology, and others.

While the Kaomoji probably is what most people are thinking of as Japanese emoticons. Kaomoji literally

means “face mark”; this is an emoticon style that is made up of Japanese characters and grammar punctuation that are used in expressing emotions in text and other cyber communications. With the Japanese reputation being a

very emotional and creative nation, they boost their emoticon to be popular all over the world. The other thing that made it so popular is that people do not need to read them sideways just to identify what it is trying to portray.

Here are some of the Japanese emoticons:

Happy emoticons (^­_^) (>y<) (^ V ^) ­ This emoticon is a good way to express happiness or joy.

Excited Emoticons Ｏ ( ) ≧∇≦ Ｏヽ ( ω ) ★ ★ ノ (๑> <ᴗ ๑) ­ This is a completely different emotion besides happy; the main feature of the excited emoticon is its eye composition. The makers of these emoticons focused more on the reaction of the eyes to show the excitement. Dead Emoticons ( _ ) (╭ ✖ ✖ ╮ ✖‿✖ ｡ ´✚ฺฺω✚ฺฺ ｀｡ ) ­ These fun­dead emoticons are commonly used in chats if we want to express being screwed or if we are in a dead situation. The eyes pass the message perfectly.

Crying Emoticons o(╥ ﹏╥ )o (╥_╥)(;* *;) – △These emoticons portray a very emotional person; we can use it in our conversation if we are experiencing real grief or just for a cute and fun chat expression.

Love Emoticons (˘ ³˘) (❤ ・ _ ・ ) (-_-) ♥(❤ ✿ฺฺ´ `∀ ✿ฺฺ) ﾉ – These emoticons are use to express love for a special person. For Japanese this is also a character of love 愛 , they use it as a part of their emoticons ヽ ( 愛 ´∀ ｀愛 )ノ

Resources:

http://www.mogicons.com/

http://chileanbroad.jimdo.com/2015/03/02/the-japanese-emoticons-and-their-specific-

meanings/

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading!