this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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Eh, I feel like we would've adopted our own style by now. For example, this face ^^ was fairly popular in the German internet before mobile phones and emojis took over, because it's just two key presses on the German keyboard.
I think, the main problem is simply that umlauts look like letters to us. If someone types a random Ü or Ö after their sentence, you might think they meant to write another sentence. Or you simply do not register that it's supposed to resemble a face, because it's just a letter in your mind. Much like you presumably don't either look at an E and think that it looks like a rake, because the association with the letter is much stronger.
but i am not talking about emojis… i am talking about emoticons, which came into heavy use in the early 80’s.
in any case, i was trying to be “cute” or cheeky when i suggested that “smilies” didn’t exist in Germany, but i failed to communicate that effectively. perhaps i should’ve used a winky face, or provided a little more context about the origins. sorry about my perceived snarkiness; wasn’t my intent.
EDIT : i am actually struggling to find a reference to “^^” being used by anyone; could you point me to a source, as i am genuinely curious about this
Uh, sure, ^^ has been so popular that even some renowned German news webpages have articles on it:
Wikipedia also mentions it:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirkumflex#Verwendung
I guess, here's some less good English sources, too:
And I'd wager more than 90% of the folks on feddit.org have used ^^ before, if you want to ask real people about it.