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8 months agoAh my favorite false cognate isn’t here, that means I get to post about it!
Emoticon :) is emotion + icon in English, invented in the 80s or early 90s. Exactly what you think.
Emoji is Japanese 絵文字 which basically translates to “picture character”. That word has been around for a long time; I don’t know that I can put a date to it. But certainly a lot older than computers.
They just happen to sound similar
Right, for sure if you were to pluralize emoji (which is singular) it wouldn’t be emojus in japanese.
I was gonna toss some guesses here but it’s a word I don’t think you pluralize really, as we don’t in English