The nauseating (😷) real-time statistic boards show that the Oxford word of the year had been used 1 074 015 124 (at the time of writing). If you don’t want an epileptic fit or have a weak stomach I don’t suggest visiting the site, however. is a real-time tracker of emoji use on Twitter. The situation only really became that evident after an emoji (😂) was announced as the 2015 Oxford word of the year. All creating fertile ground for the undiscriminating tapeworm of the language world to feed off its hosts. According to Global Web Index studies, 68% of South Africans use WhatsApp, 44% use Facebook Messenger, 27% use BBM, 25% Skype, 11% WeChat and 2% use Snapchat. In South Africa, 15.46 Million people make use of the web daily. The emoji is creeping into each and every language written online today and this is largely due to the impact of mobile messaging. Without sounding dramatic, Emoji, as a parasitic ‘language’, could be the culprit for the abuse and ultimate death of written language. Like ‘video killing the radio star’ and colonisation killing the oral tribe culture, mobile could quickly be fingered for killing the oral and written culture. Beyond this, even these commonly held languages are beginning to feel the strain. In the Internet Age, speaking one of these languages means African countries can be more inclusive to information, education and trade online, creating a commonality that has allowed each of the 54 states to be inclusive of the global village. After all Portuguese, French, English and Arabic are the four most commonly spoken languages. One could easily blame Africa’s colonisation for the state of the diversity of mother tongues. Griqua or more correctly known as Xirikwa or ǃOra is another example, where less than 30 speakers exist in the world. Nǀuu or Nǀhuki is a Khoisan language and when last checked in 2013, only 3 people in the world could speak it and they live in different areas of South Africa. South Africa may be home to four of the most widely spoken languages in Africa, namely English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu, and boast the largest amount of official languages in the world, but we still have some of the saddest statistics when it comes to critically endangered languages. To the west, only four people who can speak Njerep remain and in the east, only 6 people in Ethiopia can speak Ongota.

Deadpool skype emojis