Hanmoji Handbook Your guide to the Chinese language through emoji

A visual manual employs digital-age symbols to introduce one of the world's oldest living forms of writing. Leveraging widely recognizable and pictographic emoticons, this innovative work appeals to humans' language instinct and innate playfulness, dismantling potential psychological barriers when approaching something that may feel difficult or inaccessible. The colorful and icon-filled design creates explicit connections between Hanzi--Chinese characters--and emoji, enticing readers to browse and explore together with the anthropomorphic porcine narrator, Jiji, whose profile shows the emoji representing his hanmoji name, Snout Snout. Comparing Hanzi with other logographic languages including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian, and Mayan, the contents inform and intrigue regardless of one's prior knowledge of the Chinese language. How might two tree emojis make the word forest? How many spoken language groups and written forms does Chinese currently have? (Answer: 10 and two, respectively) And what is a tonal language? Using crisp layouts, thoughtful descriptions and examples, and illustrated charts, this comprehensive primer entertains while explicating a high-context language family without overgeneralizing or oversimplifying. It also incorporates Chinese culture and philosophy and educates readers about the history and process of emoji creation, among other topics. Through their broad, comparative approach, the savvy creators also demonstrate the hybridity and constantly evolving nature of languages in general. Clever, complex, yet concise and fun: This guide promises to engage language learners and curious readers. (bibliography, index, image credits) (Nonfiction. 11-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Introduction Hi! It's not every day a new writing system is born. Emoji were developed in the late 1990s in Japan. Thanks to the spread of computers and mobile phones, emoji have traveled to the far reaches of the globe, and billions of them are sent across the internet every day, expressing joy, heartbreak, late-night snack cravings, and corny jokes. There are currently more than three thousand emoji, and many more are on the way. Developed thousands of years ago and traditionally written with brushes, Chinese writing might seem to be a world away from the beeps and boops of online messages, but Chinese is one of the most popular languages online. More than eighty thousand Chinese characters are recognized in dictionaries, reflecting a long, diverse history of cultural evolution and writing. What Chinese writing and emoji have in common is that they both convey meaning through images instead of an alphabet. Many of these images began as literal depictions of the world, from trees and birds to fire and water. Over time, both writing systems have evolved to suggest more complex concepts, like "that's lit" or "thank you." We brought Chinese characters, or hanzi ( hànzì/hon3zi6 ), and emoji together because, as lovers of languages, we enjoy exploring and playing with words. And what better way to do that than with one of the oldest living visual writing systems in the world (Chinese) and one of the newest (emoji)? Hanmoji are a fun way of writing Chinese characters using emoji. We call this book The Hanmoji Handbook because it's filled with surprising insights emoji give us into understanding Chinese characters--and it provides ways to understand the parallel lives of these two writing systems, old and new. We'll begin around 1000 BCE as hanzi were first being developed, and span the years up to today, exploring how language grows and changes, how it's shaped by technology, and what hanzi can teach us as we watch new languages develop. Along the way, we'll also learn a few dozen Chinese words and a bit about linguistics , or the study of language. Ready to start? ( zǒu ba/zau2 baa1 ) Let's go! Excerpted from The Hanmoji Handbook: Your Guide to the Chinese Language Through Emoji by Jason Li, An Xiao Mina, Jennifer 8. Lee All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.