emoji gwenn ha du bzh Bretagne

The breton flag emoji for Brittany : Unicode says no ! Why?

de Youenn BORDIEC
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Unicode postpones arrival of breton flag EmojiBZH on our smartphones: Discrimination?

The incomprehensible bad news has just been published: Unicode consortium has just refused the emoticon « Gwenn Ha Du » the so called flag of Brittany.
Refused or postponed?
As far as Unicode is concerned it’s a refusal but for us Breton people it’s a postponement. It’s only a postponement because this discrimination is so obvious that it cannot stay like that for a long time.

Reminder …

In 2017 during the World Emoji Award, the breton flag also called « Gwenn Ha Du » in Breton language was second on top of the list. Despite this success the Unicode Consortium didn’t accept the emoji « Gwenn Ha Du ».

What was the reason cited?
A lack of support from the vendors. Yes, but which vendors are we speaking about? These vendors are platforms which offer emojis to their customers through softwares or applications on their mobile phones.
Then came the crowdfunding via Kengo… in order to raise funds for financing application file to Unicode and other expenses related to this application.
Last year, people in charge of emojiBZH went to Unicode head office in the United States in order to apply the file.

unicode, breton flag emoji

Unicode et l’émoji BZH – les membres

An active campaign completed by the association www.emoji.bzh.

One of the conditions requested by Unicode was to demonstrate utility of such an emojiBZH on a social network. Twitter was chosen to prove it.
Ok it’s only such a request; never mind!
The very active association www.emoji.bzh launched a campaign in order to make this demonstration at the beginning of the year 2019.
To answer the request of Unicode, the social networks rallied around for the emojiBZH during twenty eight days in January 2019. This campaign had a large success. To be precise 405,896 emojiBZH that is to say emojis « Gwenn Ha Du » were used on Twitter in only one month.

More than Scotland …

This number is far more important than the number of times the Scottish emoji has been used (384,156) and the Greek one (🇬🇷 367,257). It is also more important than the Danish emoji (🇩🇰 351,966), or the Welsh one ( 208,448) and the Lithuanian one (🇱🇹 58,708).
During this period of time (January 2019) the emojiBZH was even the sixth on top of the worldwide trends before Netflix with its 347,171 mentions and Apple with its 253,586 mentions.
This figure of 405,896 displays of the emojiBZH on twitter has shown how important it is for the breton people to get an emoji representing the « Gwenn Ha Du ».

Nowadays there are more than 3,000 emojis existing all over the world.

Regarding at least the flags and especially those related more or less to France, the following territories have already got an emoji : Martinique with 375,000 inhabitants, Guadeloupe with 390,000 inhabitants, Mayotte with 256,000 inhabitants, French Guiana with 269,000 inhabitants and French Polynesia with 290,000 inhabitants. Even smaller territories like French Southern and Antarctic Territories have got their emoji with a population of 196 inhabitants. Let’s remind that the population of Brittany has reached approximately 4.9 million inhabitants.

Not far from Brittany, in Great Britain, Wales has got its emoji with a population of around 3.0 million inhabitants and Scotland its own emoji with a population of around 5.8 million inhabitants.

Wales and Scotland.

These later emojis (Wales and Scotland) were requested directly by some people of these regions of UK. Regarding Wales, the creator of emojipedia himself Jeremy Burge and Owen Williams of BBC Wales have been campaigning for arrival of the emojiWales. As far as Scotland is concerned, Jeremy Burge has also been campaigning and leader of the Scottish National Party Alex Salmond himself has requested the introduction of the emoji for Scotland. It seems that when the creator of emojipedia is involved in the request of emojis they are accepted by Unicode easily.

Well, Unicode, what is missing in the application file of EmojiBZH?
At this stage, the association EmojiBZH seems to ignore the exact reason of this EmojiBZH refusal. Without clear explanations from Unicode, all hypothesis could be considered. All the requests from Unicode have been fulfilled including the trial on Twitter during one month.

crêpes

Don’t confuse (Great) Britain and (Small) Brittany 🙂

Breton flag emoji : what is really blocking ?

When examining the situation in Europe, it can be noticed that only non-continental regions have got their emoji on Facebook. Wales, Scotland and Man (94,000 inhabitants) and only the two first have got their emoji on Twitter. Additionally, these regions are not anymore part of the European Union.

No continental regions of the European Community has got its emoji so far.
Are all these regional emojis banned by Brussels?
Or must we understand that the French state, the most centralized state of Europe, the « Une et Indivisible » , has put pressure on Unicode to refuse the EmojiBZH?

So, What do we do now?

Well, stubborn Breton people: let’s go on! We are used to fight…
It’s clear that Paris won’t help us! We will have to get it by Ourselves. Ni Hon-Unan acronym NHU means Ourselves in breton language.

Then, we will have to fight in the next few months in order to convince people in charge at Unicode that our request is really relevant. We want to get this EmojiBZH to use it in social networks. Fighting will be through social networks.
Then all of us let’s go and use @Unicode and #WhatMoreDoYouNeed to take part in the new action launched by the association www.emoji.bzh.
We have thank this association for their work in favor of Brittany.

Unicode, breton flag emoji

@Unicode, #WhatMoreDoYouNeed – Breton, English a,d French languages

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