Nano Languages

From a popular New York Times feature last month, "13 Questions to Ask Before Getting Married", a link leads to the 1992 Gary Chapman book The 5 Love Languages, which offers a taxonomy:

• words of affirmation
• acts of service
• receiving gifts
• quality time
• physical touch

... and a found coffee cup defines "the language of flowers" in its illustrations:

• rose = love
• mint = virtue
• freesia = trust
• sweet basil = good wishes
• carnation = joy
• larkspur = levity
• primrose = youth
• jasmine = grace
• ivy = friendship
• snowdrop = hope
• pansy = warm thoughts
• rosemary = remembrance

... and a 2012 New Yorker magazine column "I Heart Emoji", that includes the more conventional as well as a "lost in translation" subset of emoticon symbology:

• a pyramid of excrement with eyes and a grin
• a stack of dollar bills with wings
• the tip of a fountain pen in front of a padlock
• a pair of hands held up, palms open, beneath a line of blue triangles
• a building with the letters BK on it (not signifying, presumably, Brooklyn)
• the number 18 circled and crossed with a diagonal line

... and as the author, Hannah Goldfield, also notes:

... Sometimes I send them on their own. I recently texted a friend mired in grad school a tiny green turtle, just to let her know I was thinking of her; she responded with a poodle, and then a yellow face blowing a kiss. Even Vladimir Nabokov, arguably unparallelled in his mastery of the English language, acknowledged that sometimes nothing but an emoticon will quite do: when, in 1969, the New York Times asked him how he ranked himself among other writers, he replied, "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile—some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question." ...

^z - 2016-04-06