The conflicting needs of emoji

[Mark E. Shoulson]

On 10/20/22 11:38, Asmus Freytag via Unicode wrote:
> On 10/20/2022 2:07 AM, Dominikus Dittes Scherkl via Unicode wrote:
>> Am 20.10.22 um 00:26 schrieb Marius Spix via Unicode:
>>> There is actually a sequence of Unicode characters to clearly describe
>>> a “Physics Teacher” without the downsides you have mentioned:
>>>
>>> U+0050 U+0068 U+0079 U+0073 U+0069 U+0063 U+0073 U+0020 U+0054 U+0065
>>> U+0061 U+0063 U+0068 U+0065 U+0072
>>>
>> This has a different downside: You need to speak english to understand
>> it. This is especially what emoji try to circumvent.
>>
>> -- 
>
> No. Emoji weren't and aren't used primarily to be language 
> independent. In fact, I bet there's much use of emoji that is based on 
> puns and similar mechanisms: where the emoji is used to stand for a 
> word in an expression in some language where another language (or 
> culture) would employ a different word or expression, so that even 
> translating the nominal meaning of the emoji wouldn't help you.
>
A few years ago, I bought The Emoji Haggadah 
(https://www.amazon.com/Emoji-Haggadah-Martin-Bodek/dp/0359159370), 
which has essentially the whole text of the Haggadah in emoji.  In 
*English* in emoji, mind you.  So for example I think it tended to use 
🐇 to mean "rabbi".

The truly disturbing thing about it was that I found I could read it!!

Emoji are very definitely culture-centric.  Are they language-centric 
like the string of letters?  Probably not.  I think I have to agree that 
the string of Latin letters is not an acceptable substitute for an 
emoji, but that doesn't mean emoji are a language-free neutral zone of 
graphics.

~mark