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Emojis and abbreviations
From MfG to hdl to character combinations that are supposed to represent faces: What started with a few abbreviations in the first SMS has now almost developed into its own language. Would you like to increase your vocabulary a little? We provide you with an overview of the most popular emojis and abbreviations of the smartphone language.
Hardly a message or a photo is sent via WhatsApp without emoji. A few years ago, smileys were limited to a few facial expressions, mostly made up of different combinations of characters. The smiling face, made up of the punctuation marks colon and open bracket, has meanwhile given way to a wealth of miniature graphics and symbols. And times have changed when it comes to abbreviations: while the abbreviation “LG” has long been used in business emails, smartphone language has already spawned hundreds of other abbreviations. Here we give you an overview of the most important ones.
Cell Phone Abbreviations: It started with SMS.
The symbols that are so ubiquitous today are actually not that old: it wasn't until 1994 that Nokia began to equip mobile phones with an SMS function as standard. Mainly young people have discovered this service for themselves and thus helped SMS to soar. And because an SMS with a maximum of 160 characters at that time offered little space for long words, terms and even whole sentences were abbreviated at some point. The abbreviations were later used in other electronic media and are now ubiquitous.
The most important abbreviations of the smartphone language.
You write something funny and your interlocutor replies with a “ LOL ”? Your co-worker responds to a request with "I'll take care of it asap," and you end the late-night conversation with a simple " gn8 "? Welcome to the world of smartphone language! While the meaning behind many abbreviations is immediately apparent, others require a little more thought. The fact that some abbreviations are based on English terms while others are composed of German words does not make things any easier. That's why you'll find the most important abbreviations of the smartphone language here.
English abbreviations.
| shortcut | meaning | Explanation |
| 2L8 | too late | too late |
| 4u | for you | to you |
| 4e | forever | always, forever |
| asap | as soon as possible | as soon as possible |
| bf | boyfriend | friend, relationship partner |
| bff | best friends forever | best friends forever |
| btw | by the way | by the way |
| brb | be right back | I'll be right back |
| cu | see you | see you soon / see you |
| possibly | girlfriend | girlfriend, relationship partner |
| gn8 | Goodnight | Good night |
| fyi | for your information | for your information/btw |
| Grats / gz | congratulations | congratulations |
| hf | have fun | have fun |
| jk | just kidding | just for fun |
| lol | laugh out loud | loud laughing |
| omg | oh my god | Oh my God! |
| rofl | rolling on the floor laughing | lying on the floor laughing |
| sorry | sorry | excuse |
| thy / thx / tx | thank you | Thanks |
| T+ | think positive | think positive |
| wb | welcome back | Welcome back |
German abbreviations.
| shortcut | meaning |
| 8ung | Attention |
| ads | all your fault |
| a.k | understood |
| bb | see you soon |
| bg | grin wide |
| biba | see you soon |
| G | grin |
| vs | grin wide |
| equal | lovely wishes |
| g+k | Greeting and kiss |
| hdl | love her |
| hdgdl | I really love you |
| ivd | I miss you |
| no | No Clue |
| mm | in my opinion |
| Rumia | Call me! |
| partly | change of subject |
| wobidu | where are you? |
| zh | At home |
From smiley to emoji.
The transmission of our emotions often falls by the wayside with text messages: Is the person we are talking to annoyed or was the answer just meant to be humorous? In order to convey the right feeling in addition to the written message, the use of smileys and emojis has become widespread. In simple text programs, these are often composed of punctuation marks, while modern smartphones have a collection of different emojis in the form of small pictograms. Incidentally, the term “emoji” is a combination of the English terms “emotion” and “icon”.
| character | meaning |
| ^^ | Squint, grin |
| -.- | annoyed |
| :$ | Sick |
| :-),:) | laughing smiley |
| :-( | Sad Smiley |
| :'-( | crying smiley |
| :-| | grim smiley |
| :-0 | amazed smiley |
| :-x | silent smiley |
| :-p | Tongue out smiley |
| :-* | kissing smiley |
| ;-) | winking smiley |
| :-D | loud laughing smiley |
| x | kiss mouth |
| xo | kiss mouth and hug |
The evolution of emojis.
Just as our written language is constantly changing and dictionaries are constantly being expanded with new terms, emojis are also subject to constant change. It is not uncommon for this to be set in motion by social phenomena or global events: the virus emoji and the mask emoji have been used much more frequently since the beginning of 2020 than ever before. The formerly only yellow emojis have been supplemented with different skin colors in recent years and role clichés have also been broken: the emojis intended to represent a family now also include pictograms of same-sex adults with children.
The most popular emojis.
Did you know that emojis have different meanings in different countries too ? In fact, in China, clapping hands is considered a sign of sex. And there are also country-specific differences in the popularity of emojis. For example, no nation sends more mouse emojis than the Germans, while the French prefer to send hearts. The Italians have a weakness for bananas and in Spain they like to send party and air kiss smileys. The fact that New Yorkers often wait for a taxi is also reflected in the use of the appropriate emoji, because the taxi emoji is particularly popular in the "Big Apple".
