But for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say that Chinese and Japanese are far more closely related, in their written forms, to this kind of icon/symbol language that the museum exhibit is playing with. As you point out, icons derive their meanings from repeated exposures. At first glance, it might seem to the average American (or other Westerner) that, for example, 🙂 or ☺ is a smile, but for Chinese or Japanese speakers, it’s only natural that 笑 is “to smile” or “to laugh”. Once it’s widely accepted, and widely known and agreed upon, that a given symbol has a given meaning, it’s little different from language, right?

As emoticons and the like have begun to inflitrate our online language – and the emoticons are far more plentiful and creative in Japan than in the West, I’d argue – we do have to rethink what constitutes a “character” or a valid word. Is “lol” a word? The Japanese just use “笑”, or “w” (the “w” is an abbreviation of “warae”, which is how 笑 is pronounced).

I also think about symbols a lot as many have become nearly ubiquitous and universal across the world. Even when you can’t read the signs, you can usually find the bathrooms, the stairs, the elevators, the public phones, no matter where you are in the world (well, maybe I should qualify that by saying something about these symbols only being available in modern buildings, not absolutely anywhere and everywhere, but you get my point).

A fascinating topic. Thank you for this post.