{"id":70771,"date":"2026-09-01T11:16:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T11:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/polyglots\/?p=70771"},"modified":"2026-09-01T12:21:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T12:21:58","slug":"emoji-locale-art-xemoji-how-would","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/polyglots\/2026\/09\/01\/emoji-locale-art-xemoji-how-would\/","title":{"rendered":"Emoji locale (art-xemoji): how would you translate weekdays and months?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few of us have recently started reviving the Emoji localeLocale<\/span> Locale = language version, often a combination of a language code and a region code, for instance es_MX denotes Spanish as it\u2019s used in Mexico. A list of all locales supported by WordPress in https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/polyglots\/teams\/<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span> (art-xemoji). It\u2019s been dormant for years, originally set up as a testing range for platform work rather than a locale anyone would use, so it has no active conventions and no maintainer. CoreCore<\/span> Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.<\/span><\/span><\/span> sits at about 4%.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re now trying to give it a coherent system, and we\u2019d like input from people who translate into languages other than English.<\/p>\n

What this \u201clanguage\u201d is<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some constraints, so the question makes sense:<\/p>\n

Vocabulary is 27 words. That\u2019s the entire official glossary. Everything else has to be invented or left in English.
\nNo plurals. Declared nplurals=1, like Japanese or Korean.
\nNo inflection, no tense, no articles. Emoji have no morphology.
\nWord order is currently English. Not by design, just because whoever translated first worked from English. Nothing stops us changing it.
\nNo phonetics. A reader can\u2019t sound anything out. If a symbol isn\u2019t recognisable on sight, it carries nothing.<\/p>\n

So it behaves like a highly isolating language with a 27-word lexicon and a writing system where every character is a picture.<\/p>\n

The question<\/strong><\/p>\n

How would you translate weekday and month names into a language like that?<\/p>\n

One thing we\u2019ve had to abandon early: the idea that a \u201cculturally neutral\u201d option exists. Emoji originated in Japan, and the early sets are full of Japanese cultural symbols that were carried into Unicode more or less intact (\ud83c\udf8d kadomatsu, \ud83c\udf8e hina dolls, \ud83c\udf8f koinobori, \ud83c\udf91 tsukimi). Choosing emoji is choosing culture, whether or not we intend to.<\/p>\n

So the useful test seems to be recognisability rather than neutrality: can someone outside the originating culture reconstruct the meaning?<\/p>\n

By that test:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf84 for December probably works. Christmas is widely legible even where it isn\u2019t celebrated.
\n\ud83c\udf8d for January doesn\u2019t, outside Japan. It reads as \u201csome plant\u201d.
\n\u2744\ufe0f for January fails differently: it\u2019s perfectly legible, but wrong for everyone in the southern hemisphere, which is what the currently approved stringsString<\/span> A string is a translatable part of the software. A translation consists of a multitude of localized strings.<\/span><\/span><\/span> use (January \u2192 \u2744\ufe0f1\ufe0f\u20e3, August \u2192 \u2600\ufe0f8\ufe0f\u20e3).<\/p>\n

For weekdays there\u2019s a candidate that scores well on this test: the classical planetary mapping (\u2600\ufe0f\ud83c\udf19\ud83d\udd25\ud83d\udca7\ud83c\udf33\u2b50\ud83c\udf0d). Not because it\u2019s neutral, but because it\u2019s already shared very widely. The Babylonian planetary week spread west into Greek and Latin and east into Persian, Indian, Chinese and Japanese, so French mardi and Japanese \u706b\u66dc\u65e5 line up one to one. English is the outlier, having swapped in Norse gods.<\/p>\n

For months, the closest equivalent is the zodiac (\u2648\u2649\u264a\u264b\u264c\u264d\u264e\u264f\u2650\u2651\u2652\u2653). Twelve signs, one per month, astronomically defined so no hemisphere flip, and the same Babylonian lineage as the weekday planets. Recognisability is mixed: the symbols are widely known in some regions and near-invisible in others, and they carry associations with astrology that not everyone will welcome. One caveat: zodiac periods don\u2019t align with month boundaries (Aries runs 21 March to 19 April), so the mapping would be approximate rather than exact. But it\u2019s the only twelve-item system we\u2019ve found that doesn\u2019t break in half the world.<\/p>\n

What would help<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the weekday or month names in your language come from a system that isn\u2019t Roman or Christian in origin, we\u2019d like to hear about it. Lunar calendars, agricultural cycles, numbered months, animal cycles, anything. We\u2019re looking for a system that enough people can reconstruct, and the Roman one clearly isn\u2019t the only candidate.<\/p>\n

Working notes: https:\/\/github.com\/bissy\/wp-emoji-locale-style-guide<\/p>\n

Discussion in #<\/span>polyglots-emoji<\/a> on SlackSlack<\/span> Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https:\/\/slack.com\/<\/a>. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/chat\/<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

#<\/span>reason-request<\/a><\/p>\n