In my ongoing, although sorely beset on all sides, defence of the English language I must acknowledge a worthy foe.
This is not to say I respect this enemy, and I certainly do not admire their work. But I admit they have become legion and good English is hard pressed by their fell onslaught.
I’m talking about the cult of emojis. Those little faces, and other depictions, in electronic messages.
I laughed in 2015 when Oxford Dictionaries named “the face with tears of joy” emoji as their word of the year. I thought this was an ironic, perhaps comical, stab at a childish frippery. No more to be taken seriously than the arrangement of the letter “o”, a bracket, and several equals signs to depict a sword oo{=======>
I’m not laughing now. These unsqueezed plooks have spread all across the face of online communication. It won’t be long before TV news bulletins start displaying choo-choo sketches instead of the word “train”, and yellow discs with down-turned mouths when bad news scrolls along the bottom of the screen. You’ll be sent a picture of a syringe alongside an arm as a Covid vaccine reminder.
Our birthright is the English language. It has the widest vocabulary of all languages. Any concept, any object, any thing you have the wit to imagine can be described with this endlessly fecund tool of expression. I’m going to put it plainly: anyone who is so lacking in basic English skills that they can’t properly express themselves without using infantile squiggles is a fool.
No profound truth can be revealed by a face with crosses for eyes. No poetry is woven from line drawings of vegetables. No deeds of great moment are inspired by a thumbs-up sign.
If anyone sends me a message using pictograms then take it as read I won’t read it. I won’t understand what you are trying to say. My eye skips over these dull-witted doodles. I make no attempt to decipher them, and never will.
The swarm of this semi-language will soon engulf all written material. No one will use basic words like carrot, happy, aeroplane, or love. There will only be little red hearts and drawings copied from books aimed at pre-school children to represent such words.
No one will know how many Rs are in carrot, or realise there is an “ae” start to aeroplane. Proper punctuation will become extinct because commas, semi-colons, and apostrophes can’t be inserted between pictures. Words that are difficult to draw – such as reform, constitute, or redeem – will wither and die.
This is a serious battle. This is war. The future of communication on this planet is at stake and the enemy armies are winning. Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs to them.
Word of the week
Pygal (adjective)
Of, or pertaining to, the hind-quarters of an animal. EG: “I think emojis are pygal-produced effluent.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
