My japanese friends send me all kinds of emoticons but I have no idea what they mean exacty. I can only guess.

Is there a kind of a search where I can paste an emoticon and find the meaning.

To be frank, j-emoticons are a pain in the ***

what does this mean? -> (´；ω；｀)

"terribly sad"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons

Oh thanks!

It's surprising that that emoticon can be found on that list.

ヾ(*´▽｀)ﾉミ☆
this one's excited, right?

...can't find on any lists

[ファブリス]

jettyke Wrote:what does this mean? -> (´；ω；｀)

Looks like a piglet to me. :p

http://www.kaomojinavi.net/

This place has a pretty comprehensive list of Japanese emoticons. It's amazing how many there are.

pudding cat Wrote:http://www.kaomojinavi.net/

This place has a pretty comprehensive list of Japanese emoticons. It's amazing how many there are.

Do you know how I can just search for the emoticon on that site? Because it's a pain searching in all those lists.

By the way I have no words to describe the beauty and simplicity of this thing!

´Д｀;≡;´Д｀

It's not there are a lot of them, it's that they can be made however you want. So there's endless variety in the ones you see. There isn't some set list of Internet-approved emoticons or something.

jettyke Wrote:ヾ(*´▽｀)ﾉミ☆
this one's excited, right?

...can't find on any lists

Interesting I think one of my Japanese friends uses that exact one.

Either we have the same friend (unlikely), or Japanese people memorize the common ones..

I think that there is a kind of a thing that you type something in hiragana and it turns up like this. I doubt that they type every dot there.

aphasiac Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:ヾ(*´▽｀)ﾉミ☆
this one's excited, right?

...can't find on any lists

Interesting I think one of my Japanese friends uses that exact one.

Either we have the same friend (unlikely), or Japanese people memorize the common ones..

Most Japanese phones have 顔文字 support...if you want to have some fun, type 顔文字 using Google IME...(^^)v

I feel like Japanese people are intentionally putting like LOADS of emoticons to make other people feel like they're really excited, when they really are not.

How to see through what the person who uses emoticons really feels and means?

Although it seems like a stupid question, I'm still hoping for something interesting
(And how they make their fake smiles on photos is also kinda fake:S)

jettyke Wrote:I feel like Japanese people are intentionally putting like LOADS of emoticons to make other people feel like they're really excited, when they really are not.

How to see through what the person who uses emoticons really feels and means?

Although it seems like a stupid question, I'm still hoping for something interesting
(And how they make their fake smiles on photos is also kinda fake:S)

How are Japanese people unique in that?

Over here, teens use smileys pretty much instead of periods and exclamation marks. In real life they're not smiling and laughing with every single sentence they say.

There are emoticons (kaomoji) packs that you even can put into your IME, so when typing in Japanese, various emoticons will show up. It will help you understand them better.

E.g.:
Tpye: さむい
Get the following:
((´д｀)) ぶるぶる・・・さむ~~
{{ (>_<) }}
彡(-_-彡ヒューヒュー

Type: へへ
Get:
(￣▽￣)うへへへぇ～
ヽ(´▽｀)/へへっ
ヽ(´▽｀/＝3＝3＝3＝3　へへへ～っ♪

etc.

On the iPhone at least if you have the Japanese keyboard active you can access these emoticons by:

If Roman alphabet is active, select the globe key.
Your keyboard should have hiragana on the buttons.
On the bottom row, second from left (next to the globe icon) there should be a button with "^^" and a dash under those eyes.
By pressing this it should pop up a list near the input field, press the arrow.
You should now be able to see a crapload of these crazy emoticons.

This is one of the longer ones:

*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･'(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)'･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

ー═┻┳︻▄ξ(✿ ❛‿❛)ξ▄︻┻┳═一

／人 ◕ ‿‿ ◕ 人＼　わけがわからないよ

Here is a good site that lists them

http://club.pep.ne.jp/~hiroette/en/facemarks/body.html

Hmmm... Should I start SRSing emoticons now??? :/

BooBooQ88 Wrote:Hmmm... Should I start SRSing emoticons now??? :/

I'd say no. They're not useful enough to srs them, and there are too many of them.

I'd say learn to understand them.

What's that last thing with three signs?

" いい事言ってくれるわねありがとう*** "

I really doubt that it's "ass"

This is the best thing for kaomoji input. If using the google JP ime just import that version of the emoticon pack it into your dictionary list. I dunno about other input methods.

http://matsucon.net/material/dic/

Quote:What's that last thing with three signs?

"xxxx" I guess

Brain activity while reading sentences with kanji characters expressing emotions: an fMRI study on kanji characters expressing “laughter” and “tears”

I'm impressed that someone actually did a study on this.

An interesting bit:

“Let us compare emotive kanji characters with emoticons, which are also added at the end of a sentence. Strictly speaking, experiments with the same subjects and behavioral tests are required for such comparison; however, here we consider only the brain activation results.

Significant activation of the fusiform gyri was detected in the case of emotive kanji characters. On the other hand, the fusiform gyri are reported to be activated not only when reading kanji characters, but also when seeing faces (7, 32, 42, 43). The fusiform gyri are believed to participate in configural processing of faces and kanji characters (16) as well as in semantic processing (17). Kanji characters are complex shapes composed of so-called radicals and other components, which are involved in recognition (15). Similarly, a human face is composed of several parts, such as the nose and mouth, which convey individual features and expressions. Proceeding from these common properties, we may hypothesize that activation of the fusiform gyri is related to the complexity of configural processing and semantic processing. Furthermore, considering that the fusiform gyri are not activated by emoticons, we may assume that configural and semantic processing of faces and kanji characters is rather complex compared to emoticons.”