[shagie]

Hieroglyphics were (mostly) phonetic. You can do a 1:1 mapping of hieroglyphics to Ancient Greek (with a few exceptions) - Carl Sagan Videos: Cosmic Rosetta Stone - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xeryd2

Emoji are entirely ideograms.

[thih9]

(nsfw-ish) There are uses of emoji related to phonetics. E.g.:

> Sometimes people will simply use the corn emoji in place of the word 'porn', too.

https://www.capitalfm.com/internet/corn-meaning-porn-explain...

Similarly rooster emoji (cock) and cat emoji (pussy) have language dependent double meanings.

https://www.threads.net/@authorjennplummer/post/C6pKkIlSPUM

[4gotunameagain]

Technically they are pictograms, as ideograms refer to more abstract concepts (with some exceptions e.g. the representation of an ass by a peach..)

[zarzavat]

It’s both. Each emoji has a pictographic meaning as defined by Unicode, but there’s also a language that has arisen contextually on social media. For example the “painting nails” emoji may refer to painting one’s nails, but it can also mean “whatever” as in “whatever you say I’m just painting my nails”.

Or the skull emoji which has a variety of meanings relating to being metaphorically dead - “I’m dying from laughing”, “you’re fucked”, etc.

There’s also the controversy over the acceptability or not of using the sobbing emoji to represent laughter.

[4gotunameagain]

yes, but emojis with more complex meanings are the exceptions. The vast majority are pictograms (when considering the total number of emojis)