"Sign" is too general. The word has no less than 12 meanings, and can
refer e.g. to many Unicode characters that are not emojis ("the sharp
sign", "the less-than sign").[1]
It's useful to have a specialized word referring specifically to the new
pictograms used to color electronic messages with emotional inflection.
Borrowing is a perfectly adequate and natural strategy to get such a word
into a language – as indeed English did with the word "sign", from Old
French *signe *< Latin *signum* ; and as Japanese did with the English
word *emotion
*, from which the *emo-* in *emoji, *and with Chinese, from which *-ji*
"written character".
If borrowing words when they're useful is ridiculous, then all languages
are ridiculous, and when everything is ridiculous nothing is.
[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sign
2014-11-17 8:09 GMT-02:00 Andreas Stötzner <[email protected]>:
>
> Am 17.11.2014 um 08:35 schrieb Mark Davis ☕️:
>
> IT’S EASY TO DISMISS EMOJI. They are, at first glance, ridiculous
>
>
> The only ridiculous thing is to name them “Emoji” outside Japan.
> They’re just signs and that’s it.
>
>
> Regards,
> Andreas Stötzner.
>
>
>
>
>
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