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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/8/2021 2:43 AM, Martin J. DΓΌrst
via Unicode wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a8d05560-8304-878b-ac88-bd570d449fe9@it.aoyama.ac.jp">
<blockquote type="cite" style="font-size: large; color: #3333FF;">...,
if everyone uses a different ad-hoc circumlocution I would not
count
<br>
that as "representable" in the sense that matters for encoding
decisions.
<br>
<br>
I would make that as a principled distinction, irrespective of
where you come
<br>
down here for "Thank You!".
<br>
<br>
Andrew Glass had suggested: π
<br>
<br>
Clearly, neither his, not your suggestion are as universal as
the spoken phrase
<br>
(within its language). So, you could say that a clear and
unambiguous
<br>
representation in emoji does not (yet) exist.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
And it may never exist. π, to just take an example, can be used
for thank you, but also for to represent "please" or
"praying/prayer", and probably other things. And that's not
something Unicode can decide, it's the users who make things up.
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>Agreed.</p>
<p>The point is, users of English have settled on a pretty universal
phrase, and you can settle the question whether that is
"representable" in written English.</p>
<p>For the emoji writing system, users have "agreed" on all sorts of
conventions, like the secondary meaning given the "egg plant"
emoji, but it isn't clear to me that "thank you" has a common and
recognizable representation (yet). <br>
</p>
<p>One may evolve, but just because anyone can put together two
emoji that (to them) express the concept of "thank you" doesn't
mean that it is "representable". If lots of people agree on such
an emoji phrase, so that they would use it when writing and
recognize it with reasonable certainty where they see it written,
then we can say that that phrase or idiom is a representation of
that concept.</p>
<p>Until that point you would have to say that the question is open.
I don't speak "emoji" well enough to know whether the β€οΈπ idiom
has achieved critical mass in recognition, but the fact that on
this list we immediately got an alternate, π, illustrates the
problem: the suggested idiom is at this point not universal. <br>
<br>
This isn't to say that everything has to have a universal
representation or that all emoji can only have one meaning.
Clearly, that's not how the writing system works. Just as some
languages have a much broader range of "thank you!" expressions
than others, or are able to use "thank you" to mean a request.</p>
<p>But before you call something "representable" in an evolving
writing system, there should be some expectation of that
representation being clearly recognized by others. Certainly if
you use that verdict of "representable" to foreclose other
innovations, like adding a new emoji (whether with a primary or
alternate meaning covering that concept).<br>
</p>
<p>A./<br>
</p>
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