What is the emoji most used in your country?

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emoji_01Today communication and social relationships have the internet as main scene. Under the umbrella of the modern life, Emoji have become a vital part of communication. As a result, colourful icons are everywhere: TV programs, books, songs, and of course in the thousands of text messages that people around the world send everyday by WhatsApp on their mobile phones.

Everybody use them but not in the same way. Actually, emoji used can say a lot about your culture and your language. A newly released study shows that there are some differences in the way people who live in different countries and don’t speak the same language use emoji. In order to learn what emoji use could reveal across 16 different languages and regions, a company that creates mobile keyboards apps analysed more than one billion sets of emoji data. Happy faces, including winks, kisses, smiles and grins were the most popular (covering 800 emoji across 60 categories), making up 45 per cent of all the messages studied from both Android and iOS devices.

One of the survey’s important findings is that happy faces are still the most common one by far and account half of all emoji usage. Sad faces were in second place followed by hearts, which includes all colours of hearts and the broken heart emoji.

Hand gestures such as thumbs up, clapping hands and the peace were in fourth, followed by romantic emoji, such as the lipstick kiss mark, love letter and couple kissing.

But here is other interesting news according to the use of emoji by nationalities:

– Americans use LGBT emoji 30% more than the average, followed by Canada and Malaysia. In contrast, the Vietnamese use them the least. Americans also love random emoji, including skulls, birthday cake and fire.

– French are the most loved-up, sending and using as many heart emoji as other regions and languages.

– Australians use double the average amount of alcohol-themed emoji.

– Russians use three times more romantic emoji including the kiss mark.

– Brazilians use religious emoji at more than double the average rate, mainly prayer hands, churches and stars in night sky.

– Funny emoji, including farts and poop, are used by Malaysian speakers at nearly double the average rate, but are least used in Russia.

– Malaysians also use twice as many sleep-related, and Canadian and Vietnamese people use the poop emoji most.

– Flowers and plants emoji are used at more than four times the average rate by Arabic speakers, but Russian speakers use three times as many romantic emoji than the average.

– Meanwhile, Australians and Spain battle it out for the title of party region.

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The languages studied include English, including US, UK and Australian, Spanish, Vietnamese, French, Malaysian, Arabic, German, Turkish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Russian.

Sources:

By Lidia Capitan Zamora. Journalist, web editor and social media expert.

Communication Trainee at TermCoord