THE MODIFICATION OF LANGUAGE

Africa is known for being home to some of the ancient languages of the world, which can be explored at a later date in depth.

Chinese characters known as ‘Hanzi’ depict the earliest form of writing dating back around 5100 years. Sumerian tales and poems were discovered in 2100BC, written on a famous artifact  “the Kish Tablet” probably written by the Babylonians.

The earliest English could have been inscribed on clay pots, the first most likely spoken language emerged in the British Isles from migrants from Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

But let us not dwell on antiquities, and rather fast forward to a modern form of communication occurring nonstop in our everyday lives, and if you thought of Emojis,  you were spot on !!

These were developed by Shigetaka Kurita in1999, language becoming pictorial for ease of communication while working on a nascent mobile internet system. He was only 25 years old!  Today, more than 9 million emojis occur daily on texts sent out on Facebook.

In 2015, for the first time ever, the Oxford dictionary celebrated the word Emoji as its “word of the year”. Today, around 3000 exist.

Some may be adamant that language is being degraded due to this modern phenomenon, but reasonable explanation arises and to quote “without the voice or image, the written word can be conveyed as harsh and hurtful”.

27 emojis exist based alone on joy, grief, disgust, fear, surprise, anger, pride, and shame. These are assigned to express the writer’s emotions and personality without harsh and hurtful text.

Apparently the top 5 express joy, love, sadness, fear, and doubt.

So there you have it readers, do not let anyone criticize you for destroying a language, rather displaying your sentiments in keeping up with a fast-changing world.