Every day, people send billions of emoji. We use them to say 'thank you,' to make a joke soft, or to show love with one small heart. But where do emoji come from?
The emoji set that made emoji famous appeared in Japan in 1999. A man named Shigetaka Kurita drew 176 small pictures for early mobile phones. The word 'emoji' is Japanese: 'e' means picture, and 'moji' means character. Many people think the word comes from the English word 'emotion,' but that is not true. It is just luck that the two words sound alike.
At first, emoji only worked in Japan. Phones in other countries could not show them. That changed when smartphones added emoji for everyone, and the little pictures traveled around the world.
In 2015, a famous English dictionary chose the 'face with tears of joy' emoji as its Word of the Year. For the first time, the 'word' of the year was not a word at all. It was a picture.
Why do we love these little faces so much?
Text is fast, but it is also cold. Words alone cannot show a smile or a wink. Emoji give our short texts a face and a tone.
Emoji are not a full language — you cannot write a story with them. But they may be the closest thing we have to a world language. People in every country understand a smile.