Tell me more ×
Japanese Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 11 down vote favorite
2

I just received an email ending like this:

是非是非また誘って

How to read the ?
Zero results on Google.

As for the meaning, is it equivalent to よ ?

share|improve this question
you mean ~ <- this? I'm not sure what you are talking about, but if that's it, then it's like friendly please. よ is more less friendly but still friendly. – Hikari Iwasaki Jun 25 '11 at 0:18
6  
is that a little square? – wallyqs Aug 18 '11 at 15:10
@wallyqs: No, no little squares. – Nicolas Raoul Aug 19 '11 at 1:18

2 Answers

up vote 23 down vote accepted

It's mojibake, not a valid character. Looking at the character code I suppose it's this emoji sent from a mobile phone:

emoji

http://code.iamcal.com/php/emoji/

share|improve this answer
oh crap, that php library is awesome. Thanks for the link. – Jeshii Jun 24 '11 at 16:11
up vote 14 down vote

The character you presented is U+E4FB. According to the Unicode standard, it is in the "private use area", which means a software or hardware vendor can define what the character means on their own system. Such a character has no universally accepted meaning.

Reference: Wikipedia - Mapping of Unicode characters - Private use characters

"The Basic Multilingual Plane includes a PUA in the range from U+E000 to U+F8FF (6,400)."

share|improve this answer
How are you guys reading the code points? – Louis Aug 18 '11 at 21:57
@Louis: i.imgur.com/HkcMA.png – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Aug 19 '11 at 3:59
3  
@Ignacio, ohh, they are empty boxes on my version of Chrome. – Louis Aug 19 '11 at 4:20
If you're a programmer, you can use JavaScript to figure out the code point, i.e. by typing this into the address bar: javascript: "X".charCodeAt(0).toString(16) – Nayuki Minase Aug 19 '11 at 4:37

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.