After reading two articles, I understand the role and importance of signs. Signs can be seen everywhere in our lives. They can appear on warning signs prompting drivers, or they can be signs at the door of the toilet to distinguish between male and female toilets. The sign allows us to understand the message to be conveyed faster and better. Even people who don’t speak the local language can know what the sign represents. When foreign tourists see a sign with a little man in a skirt and a little man in pants, it must mean that the toilet is there. Or the aircraft logo represents an airport or an aircraft. Forks and knives represent the direction of the restaurant. These signs are universal signs, which can help us communicate without language barriers. Even if you are in a different place, you can have a good experience.

Language is the tool we use every day to communicate. There are many kinds of language, not the languages ​​of different countries, but sign language, body language, Braille, pictures, numerals, musical notes, and expressions. I’m not sure if Braille for the blind and sign language for the deaf have different meanings depending on the country, but signs like the emoji we use every day and some toilet signs we see are globally consistent. The appearance of symbols and icons allows us to express our emotions more easily and better. For example, when we were chatting on our mobile phones in the past, we could only express our mood by typing. But now we have emojis that we can send to represent our mood when we have a conversation.

In fact, our ancestors used icons and symbols to communicate and record what happened long before there were words. The icons and pictographs of the past may have looked very different from our present words but the meaning remains the same. If you go to see how Chinese characters in the past have evolved from oracle bone inscriptions to the present, they still have a similar appearance to oracle bone inscriptions. We develop words in order to better and more completely express what we want to express. Although icons can replace some words, they cannot summarize all the words to write a composition or report.