Do you know the real meaning of these WeChat Emoticons?
Source: SYSU Network
Has your Chinese friend every sent you this?
or this...?
Then I'm just going to tell you now... That conversation went way over your head.
Let’s suppose you are chatting with your Chinese boyfriend or girlfriend before sleep on wechat.You feel really exhausted and want to end the conversation as soon as possible. So you tell him/her that you have to sleep because there will be an important test or interview tomorrow morning and finally he/she agrees.
Very much relieved, you type this little man:
By which you think you mean 再见 and 晚安, sent it and go to sleep. And if that is the case, you will probably be in trouble after you wake up the next morning.
Why? Because again you mess with this mercurial little man. When you want to say good-bye on wechat, do make sure you don’t use this face because it is not a man waving hands kindly at you at all. He is absolutely sarcastic and cynical when he’s doing this. But just like little smiling man in the former episode, this man has these connotations a lot of different connotations.
So let’s interpret this face in the examples of wechat conversations. In general there are four types of uses:
Scenario 1 - We are no longer friends... jk
Explanation:
In this conversation, the response to knowing the other guy’s the bad result of a math exam is asking him to buy a dinner. Obviously it can only happen between close friends and the face in this context means, playfully, the end of our friendship.
And of course, to use it when chatting with acquaintances or strangers in China could be inappropriate.
Scenario 2 - Sincere praise
Explanation:
In these conversations somebody’s being really good or working hard at something.
Therefore, as you can guess, the waving smiley in this situation basically means to exclaim that one of your friends is really good at doing something in a much more honest way than to say ‘Congratulations!’ or ‘Well done!’. But when you are using it, do remember to add words like ‘你要不要这么厉害’ or ‘学霸’ or something like that to make sure you mean what you want to mean.
Scenario 3 - 30% love 70% hate
Explanation:
In this context its used for expressing one’s feeling towards something, means a playful repulse towards something. When you are not seriously aggravated at something or someone, use it to express your mixed feeling of 30% love and 70% hate.
Scenario 4 - Forced Smile for Anger
Explanation:
Here, the little man is actually showing his anger by a with a forced smile. But he just can’t help waving hands at the noisy people downstairs interrupting his preparations for the coming final exam, which literally means ‘why don’t you get out of her.
Have you ever been annoyed at someone cutting in line?
Well, they made an emoji for it... other scenarios can include someone littering on the campus, teachers do nothing but read power points slide on classes, roommates typing on a plastic keyboard like a t-rex trampling over Chris Pratt when you're trying to get to sleep. That's were this emoji comes into play.
Believe me. This is a face on which you can write a linguistic PhD essay.
It is so often used in our QQ and Wechat conversations yet the actual meaning of it is so blurred and even chaotic that I have to think for some weeks before writing about it. It seems quite obvious to everyone that he is picking his nose. But why the frowning eyebrows? Why the sideways look and why the pouted mouth? Nearly all of us use it without considering these things. But you don’t need these details to help you use it well when chatting with your friends. Let’s get right down to some examples.
Scenario 1 - Introverted
Explanation:
In this context, you can use both nose pick smiley and the wavey smiley. But while the wavey smiley is somehow directly expressing playfully ‘our friendship is over(友尽)’, the nose pick one is expressing in a more introverted way the slight dissatisfaction here.
You can simply imagine a very out-going friend responds to this deliberately apathetic ‘不去，去亚马逊买都你带方便’, saying: ‘Now I have to reevaluate our friendship,’ who will be best described by the wavey smiley. And, in the same way, you can also imagine a seemingly reticent and reserved friend, who is actually quite easy to get along with, saying nothing after hearing ‘不去，去亚马逊买都你带方便’, and silently digs his nose. LOL
Scenario 2 - Passive Aggressive "Alright then..."
Explanation:
If you really understand this conversation, you can easily feel the impatience or the hostility in ‘和你没关系.’ And this is where the digging-nose face works.
For example, when you try to hit on a Chinese boy/girl on Wechat and he/she turns you down like this or when you contact your friend that you know you pissed off the other day but he/she still cannot forgive you for the moment, try the nosepick with phrases like ‘好吧’ or ‘好咯’.
In this way, you can give yourself a safe exit out of this conversation without 100% giving in to the one who is somewhat unfriendly here. But, of course, the best way to deal with problems like these is always to ask directly what is wrong.
Scenario 3 - ‘Realllllllllllllly?’
Explanation:
The nosepicsmiley appears twice in this exchange of words. For the first one, the questioner is asking in a mixed attitude of impatience, curiosity and definitely, attentiveness (otherwise he or she would not not ask).
The red face smiley here is here used to show a slightly patronising and impatient attitude, which mostly appears between friends and in a joking tone. For the second one, the three smileys in a row show the questioner’s doubt about the authenticity of the answer. You can just see it as ‘realllllllllllllly?’
If you have any information or questions please leave a comment below.