Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Japanese Smileys

Most of us know side-ways smileys like :-) or :D or even 8-]. These were invented by Scott Fahlman in 1982, turn 25 years now and are used almost all over the world. Including in Google applications like Google Talk, which rotate smileys you enter into "normal" direction. The following was Scott's original post where he made his announcement that would change the world... or at least, make parts of it a little more emotional:

19-Sep-82 11:44    Scott E  Fahlman             :-)
From: Scott E  Fahlman 

I propose that the following character sequence for joke
markers:
        
:-)
        
Read it sideways.  Actually, it is probably more economica
to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends.
For this, use
        
:-(

Japanese smileys (or "emoticons"/ "facemarks") on the other hand aren't read side-ways, and they are also more stronger focused on the expression of the eyes. (Masaki Yuki of Hokkaido University claims Japanese students are "reading" emotions more through the eyes when compared to American students, who are more focused on the mouth.)

Here are some Japanese smileys courtesy of this overview (you will be able to reproduce all of them in UTF-8 character encoding, but not ASCII):

(･ｪ-)     ... good night
( ^_^)     ... hi!
m（．＿．）m     ...thanks
m(_ _)m     ... I'm sorry
(^o^)
(’-’*)
（￣ー￣）
Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ
＼（＾ ＾）／     ... I'm glad
ヘ(^_^ヘ)(ノ^_^)ノ     ... dance, sing
（；_・）     ... sadness
（ToT）     ... crying
（￣へ￣）     ... discontent
(*´ο`*)=3     ... sigh
―(T_T)→     ... defeat
＼（－－）／     ... surrender
o(>< )o ｏ( ><)o     ... wiggle
( 　ﾟ,_ゝﾟ)     ... mock
☆⌒(＞。≪)     ... pain
＼(>o<)／     ... panic
(ﾟｰﾟ)(｡_｡)     ... yes yes
(ι´Д｀)ﾉ     ... call
(´～`)     ... sleepiness
［(－－)］ZZzzz     ...
( `_)乂(_' )     ... duel

[Via Spiegel.]

Japanese Smileys by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (8)

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