Do you speak Emoji? Charlotteans describe their love for our city through emoticons.

Every time someone sends me an emoji I feel a wave of panic come over me and my general reaction laves me in a heap of confusion.

I understand that most people have embraced sending emojis*, and that they are the wave of the future in terms of communication… but for some reason I always feel like a foreign language translator that is horrible at their job whenever I see a little yellow emoticon.

As a social media manager, I use them all the time, but in my personal life I refrain from using them mainly out of fear that I will not make any sense and people will actually realizing that I am emoji illiterate.

As this article states, emojis are a universal language and I am the outlier rather than the norm.

If I continue to not keep up, I will no longer be able to communicate with the rest of humanity.

So, as a practice I posted the tweet below and am going to try my hardest to translate what people’s responses mean. Please be gentle in your judgement of my emoji translating skills.

Translation: Charlotte is new, cool, and it’s clean. The sun costs money, has great art, sports, food, and beer.

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Translation: It is diverse.

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Translation: It is cheap to live here, I am a trolley, has lots of sports, outdoor activities, and a good place to raise a family of Trolleys.

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Translation: The sports, charts?, transportation, Carowinds, music, food, and has all four seasons. America!

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Translation: Spring and fall seasons, the food and drinks, the music and the arts, sports, and the sun rises and sets?

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Translation: The Queen City has the light rail and is easy to get around, it is trending to peace, the arts and your cell phone, colleges, sports, beer, food, dog friendly, nature, Canada?, and winter.**

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Translation: We love the Queen City because of the beer, sports, food, arts, and people we meet.

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Translation: The sun waves over the city, it rains and snows, when the trees lose their leaves, families eating strawberries, the Hornets, sailing, sports, arts, the airport, expensive homes?, and tap water.

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Translation: Psychotic cats, the beer and music, Carowinds, BB&T BallPark, the wine, and ice cream.

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Translation: The web of donuts and coffee, beer, can ride your bike, arts, the sun rising, and more donuts.

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Translation: When it is sunny you can ride your bike and wear a shirt, public transportation, new buildings and homes, cool people, and sports.

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Translation: The food, parties, nightlife, and public transportation.

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Translation: Bo Time?

What I learned in doing this is?…Emojis are still terrifying. I spent an hour trying to decipher these tweets and still know I got them wrong. While I might begin to use them more in my life, I will never try replace actual language with emojis, rather use them to accentuate emotions.

*the average person sends 96 emojis a day, and over 6 billion are posted worldwide daily.
**this was not easy.