Well, no. It wouldn’t be the first kanji of English. Kanji is the Japanese pronunciation of 漢字 (hanzi), where 漢 means han/China and 字 means character/letter. Ergo, it makes no sense to call it “the English language’s first and only Chinese character.”
If you need to use a Japanese word to describe this, then 絵文字 (e mo ji; picture, character/symbol) fits better, but we already have several words for that, like pictogram or pictograph. One could argue that smileys fall into this category as well. So perhaps it’s a smiley.
Learning random cool stuff like this is part of why I like lemmy, and why I used to like reddit. Please don’t shut down constructive contributions with low effort snark. And before you use your line on me, if I were fun at parties, I would get off lemmy and go to parties.
There is a difference between “btw etymological this used to mean that but since X we use it in other contexts as well” and “no, you are wrong”. The difference is one is fun at parties, the other is not.
Well, no. It wouldn’t be the first kanji of English. Kanji is the Japanese pronunciation of 漢字 (hanzi), where 漢 means han/China and 字 means character/letter. Ergo, it makes no sense to call it “the English language’s first and only Chinese character.”
If you need to use a Japanese word to describe this, then 絵文字 (e mo ji; picture, character/symbol) fits better, but we already have several words for that, like pictogram or pictograph. One could argue that smileys fall into this category as well. So perhaps it’s a smiley.
The etymological fallacy…
I bet you’re fun at parties
Learning random cool stuff like this is part of why I like lemmy, and why I used to like reddit. Please don’t shut down constructive contributions with low effort snark. And before you use your line on me, if I were fun at parties, I would get off lemmy and go to parties.
There is a difference between “btw etymological this used to mean that but since X we use it in other contexts as well” and “no, you are wrong”. The difference is one is fun at parties, the other is not.