India is looking for love on Tinder, announced a CNN headline last year, as the popular dating app gained popularity with its promise to find a soulmate simply by swiping right. WhatsApp and other instant messaging apps have been around longer, keeping conversations going – far too long, in some cases. Each day, users spend hours swiping, typing and, most importantly, carefully choosing just the right emoji, one of the fastest growing forms of communication in history.
For the uninitiated, an emoji is "an iconic, visual representation of an idea, entity, feeling, status or event, that is used alongside or instead of words in digital messaging and social media." Earlier this year, SwiftKey, one of the most popular keyboard apps on smartphones, analysed more than a billion pieces of emoji data to learn how speakers of different languages are using these graphic images to express particular feelings and emotions. SwitKey has now come up with the second version of its report, which looks at 15 new languages and analyses the use of emoji among its Hinglish – a hybrid of English and Hindi – speakers for the first time, based on the language installed on their devices.
Surprising findings
The report's findings have some heart-breaking news: Hinglish users do not seem to be using the heart-shaped emoji much – in fact, they are at the very bottom of all linguistic groups when it comes to using these emoticons:
The emoji usage from SwiftKey Cloud was analysed over a four-month period between October 2014 and January this year across both Android and Apple’s iOS platforms.
However, this doesn’t mean that they excel at nothing.
Apparently, Hinglish users tend to use the emoticon with prayer hands "four times more than the other languages, on average". It's all relative. This figure may seem high, but the prayer hands emoji only makes up 0.8% of their use of all emojis, compared to an even lower 0.2% average across all languages.
Party and animals
However, partying is one area where Hinglish speakers left their counterparts far behind. "Most notably," the report noted, "they use party emojis more than any other language – anything from the cake emoji to dancers to party streamers."
As if partying wasn’t enough, Hinglish users also tend to have a tendency to express themselves by making faces. “Hinglish users also enjoy some of the colourful facial expression emoji more than all other languages,” the report said. “Hinglish speakers have a fondness for body parts emoji (eyes, nose, ears, etc), and interestingly for the tongue in particular!”
As a result, Hinglish is the top language, the report noted, "for what can only be described as the ‘winky sticky out tongue’ face and the simpler ‘sticky out tongue’ face."
Word of keyboard
Noting the rise of emoji as a way to communicate, the report noted that their use is dependent on social sharing and trends are likely to change faster if more people start using some emojis more than others. “Emoji are spread by word of mouth, or in this case word of keyboard," said Catalina Hallett, language engineer at SwiftKey. "They tend to spread within groups of users that come into verbal contact first – so a group of friends and their social network, then the wider network or country."
“Since they are language-independent," Hallett said, "I suspect the use of certain emojis will spread much more quickly than language slang and will cross country boundaries much more easily.”
Here's a handy table for ready reference:
For the uninitiated, an emoji is "an iconic, visual representation of an idea, entity, feeling, status or event, that is used alongside or instead of words in digital messaging and social media." Earlier this year, SwiftKey, one of the most popular keyboard apps on smartphones, analysed more than a billion pieces of emoji data to learn how speakers of different languages are using these graphic images to express particular feelings and emotions. SwitKey has now come up with the second version of its report, which looks at 15 new languages and analyses the use of emoji among its Hinglish – a hybrid of English and Hindi – speakers for the first time, based on the language installed on their devices.
Surprising findings
The report's findings have some heart-breaking news: Hinglish users do not seem to be using the heart-shaped emoji much – in fact, they are at the very bottom of all linguistic groups when it comes to using these emoticons:
The emoji usage from SwiftKey Cloud was analysed over a four-month period between October 2014 and January this year across both Android and Apple’s iOS platforms.
However, this doesn’t mean that they excel at nothing.
Apparently, Hinglish users tend to use the emoticon with prayer hands "four times more than the other languages, on average". It's all relative. This figure may seem high, but the prayer hands emoji only makes up 0.8% of their use of all emojis, compared to an even lower 0.2% average across all languages.
Party and animals
It remains unclear why, but Hinglish language users were found communicating more often about farm animals. “Hinglish speakers like to celebrate, read, pray and often communicate about farm animals,” the report noted.
However, partying is one area where Hinglish speakers left their counterparts far behind. "Most notably," the report noted, "they use party emojis more than any other language – anything from the cake emoji to dancers to party streamers."
As if partying wasn’t enough, Hinglish users also tend to have a tendency to express themselves by making faces. “Hinglish users also enjoy some of the colourful facial expression emoji more than all other languages,” the report said. “Hinglish speakers have a fondness for body parts emoji (eyes, nose, ears, etc), and interestingly for the tongue in particular!”
As a result, Hinglish is the top language, the report noted, "for what can only be described as the ‘winky sticky out tongue’ face and the simpler ‘sticky out tongue’ face."
Word of keyboard
Noting the rise of emoji as a way to communicate, the report noted that their use is dependent on social sharing and trends are likely to change faster if more people start using some emojis more than others. “Emoji are spread by word of mouth, or in this case word of keyboard," said Catalina Hallett, language engineer at SwiftKey. "They tend to spread within groups of users that come into verbal contact first – so a group of friends and their social network, then the wider network or country."
“Since they are language-independent," Hallett said, "I suspect the use of certain emojis will spread much more quickly than language slang and will cross country boundaries much more easily.”
Here's a handy table for ready reference:
Buy an annual Scroll Membership to support independent journalism and get special benefits.
Our journalism is for everyone. But you can get special privileges by buying an annual Scroll Membership. Sign up today!