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Welcome to Iconic!
Iconic is a constructed language exploring the power of symbolism: it uses almost only emoji and there is no fixed pronunciation.
What might seem strange at first has some unique advantages: ☀️ is the sun, ⛰️ is a mountain and 🌊 is a wave – no matter how you pronounce it or where you come from. This allows Iconic to be a truly international language, accessible to almost anyone!
Also – why think in words if you can think in pictures? The oldest civilizations in the world used pictures in their writing for thousands of years: think of Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Cuneiform, Chinese characters or Maya Writing. Even prehistoric cave paintings show repeating symbols. Clearly, there is some magic in the directness of images. Most importantly though, expressing onself with pictures is pretty fun!
There are drawbacks, of course: some nuances are lost in translation and some symbols are more intuitive than others. However, over the course of this website I would like to convince you that one can, in principle, express anything with readily available emoji icons.
If you want to give it a try, head to the Language Guide, which explains the rules of the language. This allows you to approach the Material, which among other things contains a number of interesting proverbs from around the world tranlated into Iconic. As a bonus, there are also some Comics.
To create your own phrases and texts, use the Online Converter on Lingojam or the AutoHotkey Script on Windows to automatically transform English words into emoji. So far, the vocabulary contains more than 3000 common English words.
Iconic aspires to be a useful tool for art and communication, allowing anyone to express anything symbolically. Let us embark together on a journey to discover a new way of language! 🙂
Tiemo Benedikt Schröder
P.S.: for news and discussion join the group on Reddit and Discord!
Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions. Feedback about what you like and do not like and what might be confusing is also always welcome. If you like, you can also share your experiments and creations with Iconic!
Latest vocabulary update: 08-12📆
08-12📆 Grammar: changed rule 9 for the sake of
clarity.
07-29📆 Grammar: simplified rules
14,15,18,29,33
07-03📆 Website restructuring with new Language Guide.
Grammar: prefixes changed to 🔼 more and 🔽
less. Ordinal numbers may now start with #.
06-24📆 Grammar: new ⏩ plural, s
suffix for added convenience. Cleared up some ambiguities concerning
adjectives. Rhetorical questions are now ❓❓ ??.
06-05📆 Grammar: ➕ also and ➖
noteven are now only prefixes. The 👍 may and
👎 maynot verb modifiers have been changed to ✔️
yes and 🙅 no to avoid confusion with 👍
good and 👎 bad. 🤯📏 toomuch is
now only a prefix like 🙂📏 enough and 😧📏
notenough. ♾️⚖️ most is now ⏫
most and ♾️⚖️🤏 least is now ⏬
least. The ♾️❗ anything pronoun is now ❗❓
whatever.
05-14📆 Grammar: adjective nominalization now mostly
via ⭐ * instead of 🤲⭐.
05-09📆 Grammar: the subject marker ☝️
sub is now an optional emphasis.
04-27📆 New Dictionary. Moved license to About.
04-27📆 Grammar: 🙂📏 easy and 😧📏
hard1 are now normal groups.
04-18📆 Added an FAQ.
04-15📆 Release of 20 Language Cards.
04-14📆 Grammar: ❣️ <1 merged with
❗ !
04-09📆 Grammar: see Rules
03-14📆 New relations: 🔗 according and
🔗⭐ depending
02-25📆 Snail Mail Newsletter
🐌✉️.
02-22📆 Consistent rules for standalone ▶️🎬
todo and ▶️📦 tobe. (Deprecated)
02-20/21📆 Improved Online
Converter.
(Modifiers and prefixes beginning with '-' are now
automatically merged with verbs, e.g. 🐦🎬 tofly + ❤️
-love becomes 🐦❤️🎬 “love to fly”)
02-15📆 Improved Online
Converter and AutoHotkey Script.
(Verbs now start with 'to-', e.g. ❤️🎬
tolike vs. 🤲 like)
02-11📆 New Rules section,
grammar update.
02-07📆 Online
Converter on Lingojam
02-07📆 Discord Group
02-02📆 Reddit Community
01-15📆 Website Launch