2015 – the year in which the word of the year for Oxford Dictionaries is not a word – Express

For the first time, the word of the year chosen by the editors of the reputable Oxford Dictionaries is … not a word but an emoji:. “a face with tears of joy”

Your selection as “Word of the Year 2015″ comes as a recognition of the importance that amarelinhos faces have gained between written communication on the Internet, but also in SMS messages. Something the British institution claims to have known an explosion this year, from something used, especially among adolescents, for known symbols and used by most people.

“Despite the emoji as an element of messages from teens for some time, the emoji culture exploded and came to mainstream over the last year, “said the statement published by Oxford University Press on Monday.

A incorporating a digital world dominated by visual

“The emoji became a form of incorporation of life in a digital world dominated by visual, by the expression of emotions and obsessively immediacy,” adds the Oxford University Press in message in justifying the choice.

In addition to the traditional Oxford Inglês Dictionary, the publisher also launches annually the Oxford Dictionaries Online, which means it is especially attentive to the new elements used in written communication.

Having realized the highlight that emoji won in collaboration with SwiftKey (creating company applying digital keyboards for smartphones and has access to the most basic use of emojis), the publisher sought after determine the ‘face yellow ‘most popular of the year. The elected turned out to be the “yellow face with tears of joy”, which accounted for nearly 20% of emojis used in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Emoji born in 1999, Japanese Mind Shigetaka Kurita

“The emoji are becoming a form increasingly rich form of communication, one that tranpõe language barriers,” recognizes Caspar Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries.

In the article published in July, the Express was realized that Swiftkey discovered that this is the new universal language, after considering the 1.5 billion symbols used by speakers of 31 languages ​​around the world.

The emoji were created in 1999 by the Japanese Shigetaka Kurita it was inspiration from manga (Japanese comic band), the Chinese characters and traffic signals. It was however far from dreaming of the level of popularity that its creation would achieve.