British Council

每年的7月17日為世界表情符號日，這個有趣的想法是由emoji搜索引擎Emojipedia的創(chuàng)始人Jeremy Burge提出的。

Before reading

Do the preparation task first. Then read the article and do the exercises.

Preparation task

Match the definitions （A～H） with the vocabulary （1～8）.

Vocabulary Definitions

（ ?）1. thermometer A. feeling as if everything is spinning around you

（ ?）2. vomit B. the thing you use to measure temperature

（ ?）3. dizzy C. making everyone feel included

（ ?）4. inclusive D. to show what something looks like

（ ?）5. diverse E. the first day customers can buy or use a product

（ ?）6. represent F. a physical or mental condition that makes some things more difficult to do

（ ?）7. disability G. very different from each other and of various kinds

（ ?）8. launch H. to bring food from your stomach back out through the mouth

Emoji is the fastest growing language in history. About five billion emojis are sent every day， just on Facebook Messenger. They're appearing in some surprising places too. One court judge in England used a smiley face emoji in a document to make it easy to explain the court's decision to children. It's not surprising that there's a day to celebrate emojis， but what do you know about its organisers， the website Emojipedia？

Know your emoji

The company Unicode actually creates the computer codes that give us emojis， but Emojipedia is where you can learn exactly what each emoji means and how to use it. Most of us probably know and use the most popular emojis， like the classic smiley face， heart or the smiling face with tears of laughter. But if you want to grow your emoji vocabulary， you can use Emojipedia to find out new ways to speak emoji.

So， for example， go to Emojipedia and type in “sick” and it will give you several options. If you mean ill， as in the American English phrase I'm sick， you can use the face with a thermometer or a mask. Or maybe you mean I feel sick， like in British English you mean vomiting. Since 2017， when Unicode added the vomiting emoji， you can choose from two green faces. Or maybe you're just feeling a bit dizzy， in which case you can choose the confused， dizzy-looking face. If you wanted to talk about hospital or a medical condition， Emojipedia has also suggested a syringe or a pill. So you can see with just one real word， sick， you have a lot of emojis to choose from to explain exactly what you mean！