This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Abroad from the KU Center for East Asian Studies.

You’ve got your hanzi. You’ve got your hanja. And you’ve got your kanji. And you’ve got your emoji. Hanzi is, of course, the way you say Chinese character in Chinese. Kanji is the way you say Chinese character in Japanese. Hanja is the way you say Chinese character in Korean. Emoji is the way you say emoticon in textspeak All four of these words have a morpheme in common. And that is zi, ja, and ji, the word for character. Emoji are emotional characters, ubiquitous around the world. Though smiley faces and other emoticons date back to the 1880s, they were first added as a special feature to cell phones here in Japan the mid-1990s expressly for the teen demographic. By 2008, a standardized emoji alphabet had been created and last year the very word emoji was added to the OED which is funny since it’s a word that describes a concept that obviates the need for words. Emoji whiz! Insert eye rolling face here.

From the KU Center for East Asian Studies, this is Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.