What do a waffle, a skunk, a hearing aid, and a flamingo have in common? They are all part of the new emoji class of 2019
Emojis turned ten years old in 2018. They started on Apple devices in Japan only, but they have grown into a worldwide phenomenon. And this year there will be 59 new emojis, with lots of different skin color and gender combinations, to further color your text-message conversations.
Greetings, welcome back everyone, I’m Jeff, and this is Plain English, a podcast for learning English. It’s such a pleasure to be with you—my favorite part of the week is recording these episodes. Today is episode 131. Can you believe we’re already at 131 episodes? And I’m hearing that a lot of you have listened to every single one. That’s fantastic. So today’s transcript is at PlainEnglish.com/131. I’ll also put a graphic on the page showing some of the 59 new emojis. This will be important because I want to know from all of you—what is your favorite new emoji? Listen to the episode, maybe go on the website to look at the icons, and then email JR, the producer, with your choice. [email protected] . Email him your choice, your favorite new emoji of 2019, and we will announce the winners on a future episode.
New emojis for 2019
Emojis are our colorful little friends in text messages; they animate our online conversations and add a little color and emotion to the somewhat impersonal method of communication. Usually they are used to emphasize a point or to maybe just save a few keystrokes. Other times, they really make you laugh in ways that words couldn’t. You can also use emojis to represent yourself, show how you’re feeling, what you think about another person, and even talk about things that are uncomfortable or not easy to put into words. The Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit organization that sets typeface standards around the world, released its 2019 standards, which include 59 new emojis.
If there were a theme to this year’s release, it would be individuality. The emojis include ways to express disabilities. There’s a new hearing-aid emoji, plus several representing deaf people. There will soon be an emoji for a person in a wheelchair, a person in a motorized wheelchair, a person using a guide dog, a person using a cane. There are also prosthetic limb emojis.
Another set in the Emoji 12.0 release is a way of expressing relationships. You’ll be able to show two people holding hands—in any skin tone, by the way. Many of the new emojis include a man, a woman, and a person of unspecified gender.
A few things popular in the eastern world. There’s a sari. Saris are those long, colorful women’s garments that are popular in India. There is also a Hindu temple emoji, and an auto-rickshaw. Those of you in Asia know what that is. They are these little three-wheeled vehicles on the road. The way I describe them is, if a motorcycle and a car got together and had a child, it would be an auto-rickshaw. The steering mechanism is more like a motorcycle—just handlebars controlling a single front wheel. And you can hop on and off, pay just a few rupees for a quick ride. If the road is crowded, these things can hop onto the sidewalk, no problem. But I digress—the auto-rickshaw emoji will probably be a really useful one in India.
What else? Oh, the usual things from daily life. I think the skunk is one that would probably get a lot of good everyday use. The yawning face—how did we, as a society, make it to 2019 without a yawning face emoji? That will be corrected in this version. You can imagine texting that one to your coworker under the table at a boring meeting. Some others include a stethoscope, a banjo, a pair of men’s underwear, a yo-yo, and an axe. Falafel balls will be in there. Do you know what those are? It’s a kind of food from the Middle East. They’re fried balls of ground chickpeas and spices; they’re really good. And pretty soon we will have an emoji for them.
There is a one-piece women’s bathing suit. This one had some strong advocates this year. As of today, ladies have only one option for expressing swimwear in emoji format, and that is a bikini style bathing suit. Pretty much everyone goes in the water, at least sometimes, but not every woman wants to express that with a bikini emoji. There was a funny tweet in one of the articles I read. It said, “The fact that there’s no one-piece swimsuit emoji tells me there’s not many 40 year old women designing emojis.” Indeed! So now there will be a one-piece women’s bathing suit.
The one that probably carries the most importance is the drop of blood. A British charity called Plan International advocated for an emoji to represent menstruation. The reason they advocated this is to take the stigma away from talking about something that is still not a very widely-discussed topic. It’s usually talked about in whispers. So the hope is that with a new emoji, it will make it less uncomfortable to talk about. I read a really funny article in the UK newspaper, The Independent. The writer was making the point that we have emojis for all these obscure things, like vampires, ants, a boiled egg, a ball of knitting wool—but no emoji to represent a really common thing that happens to women for most of their lives. Here’s a funny quote from the article: “The typical woman,” she writes, “will have 450 periods in her life. That’s at least 449 times more than she will ever meet a vampire.” That’s funny, but a serious point. This is a long overdue emoji.
The Unicode Consortium has released the details of these new emojis to programmers, but the individual software companies like Apple and Google will have to design the faces. I actually learned this when I got an Android tablet—the actual emoji designs are not the same on everyone’s screen. They all depict the same thing, but each device maker or software maker has its own design. So you can expect the new emojis to be on your keyboard in September or October this year.
So you have about seven or eight months to start thinking about how to use the new flamingo emoji.
Quick reminder about our partner MosaLingua, at PlainEnglish.com/learn. MosaLingua has some great resources for English learners, including a pronunciation course that is guaranteed to boost your confidence and your abilities in English. You know, having trouble with pronunciation is totally normal, but if you know you don’t sound right, it can be really distracting for you as a speaker. So if you think you can use some help on that, check out PlainEnglish.com/learn and find the pronunciation help over at MosaLingua.
I want to say hi to some listeners who wrote to me since the episode I did about Venezuela. I’m recording this episode pretty far in advance, so I don’t know if there are any more recent developments in the situation there. But I heard from several people that are from Venezuela, but not currently in the country. I want to say hi to Yosmer in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; Irvin in Miami; and Otman in Peru. We are keeping your friends and family in mind as we hear about developments in Venezuela.
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