Emoticons ;)
Wykorzystujemy je w codziennej komunikacji do pisania wiadomości e-mail lub wiadomości tekstowych. Ułatwiają nam życie - zamiast długiej frazy opisującej nasz nastrój możemy użyć jednej prostej ikony. Kilka połączonych ze sobą znaków klawiatury jest w stanie wyrazić emocje i zachowanie nadawcy. O czym mowa w dziejszym artykule? ;)
We use them in everyday communication for writing e-mails or text messages. They make our life simpler – instead of a long phrase describing our mood we can use one simple icon. A few keyboard characters combined together are able to express the sender’s emotions and behaviour. Sometimes they can also stand for certain objects.
Emoticons have become extremely popular in the recent years, especially with the introduction of computers and mobile phones. However, as early as in 1881 U.S. satirical magazine Puck published a list of four emoticons standing for the emotions such as: joy, melancholy, indifference and astonishment. The man who first used the popular emoticons :-) and :-( was Scott Fahlman, American computer scientist. In a message to his University colleagues he suggested using the first of the signs for marking jokes and the second for marking serious messages.
The list of the contemporary emoticons seems to have no end. In fact, everyone can create their own emoticons or change the existing ones to suit his or her purpose by adding hyphens, parentheses, quotation marks and various other signs. We commonly distinguish between Western style emoticons written from left to right and Asian style emoticons which can be read without tilting one’s head to the left.
Wyjaśnienie najtrudniejszych słówek:
| mood | state of mind, synonym: humour |
|---|---|
| character | a letter, a number or a punctuation mark |
| indifference | the state of being thick-skinned, not caring about other people’s emotions |
| astonishment | shock |
| contemporary | modern |
| hyphen | punctuation mark used for joining words such as “non-verbal” |
| parenthesis | punctuation marks, synonym: brackets |
| quotation marks | punctuation marks used for quoting someone’s words, e.g “I love you”, she said. |
| to tilt one’s head | to move one’s head to the side (towards the arm) |
