It's either the end of civilization as we know it or a terrific step in the academic recognition of the evolving importance of the visual language of emoji, depending on your perspective. But Oxford Dictionaries has just announced that their Word of the Year for 2015 is the emoji known as "laughing through tears" or "face with tears of joy." As the Wall Street Journal notes, the emoji beat out other frontrunners for the honor including fleek, lumbersexual, and "they" in the context of usage by the genderqueer and trans communities as a singular, non-gendered pronoun.

Calling the emoji "flexible" and "immediate," Oxford Dictionaries President Casper Grathwohl says, "You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st Century communication. It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps."

Per KRON 4, Oxford teamed up with emoji keyboard maker SwiftKey to identify the most frequently used emoji for English speakers, concluding that it was "face with tears of joy" — which represents 17 percent of all emojis used in the U.S., and 20 percent in the U.K.

This means, at least in some linguistic circles, all those strings of gibberish and emoticons that you text to your sister or significant other are becoming important artifacts of our linguistic moment, which actually transcend language borders entirely. Or something.

To be clear, Oxford Dictionaries the online linguistic resource has tried to set itself apart from the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the most famous reference tome produced by Oxford University Press — and which is well respected in academia because it traces words to their earliest known usages in print and analyzes the evolution of their meanings. The mission of Oxford Dictionaries is "improving communication through an understanding and passion for language," and they say, "As lexicographers and linguists, we collect, process, and analyse the living language and how it’s changing, its history, its usage, its relations with other languages, and who’s using it, from highbrow to slang."

It should be noted that they've tried to stick to the zeitgeist with all their recent Word of the Year choices. Last year's was "vape," and before that we had "selfie" in 2013, and "GIF" in 2012.

Maybe next year they should just launch an "Emoji of the Year" category if they love them so much? Just saying.

Related: Now Your iPhone Comes With A Burrito Emoji

If you've been around Northern California for a while, you should know about Boontling, the weird, charming, very country sounding dialect that was invented about 150 or so years ago in the Anderson Valley town of Boonville. It uses proper names and various slang words in English to stand in for other words, and it may have been invented so men in the town could talk dirty amongst themselves without the ladies knowing. In any event, the 12 people left who can speak it fluently are getting very old, and the Chron has just published a new piece about it.

You can hear some snippets in the video above, via one of its remaining speakers, 80-year-old Wes Smoot.

Linguists have marveled at Boontling over the years, with one English professor at California State University at Chico having written the definitive book on it in 1971. That professor, Charles Adams, says the only other American dialect quite as extensive is Appalachian English. Boontling consists of about 1,500 distinct words and phrases, many of which refer to people from Boonville's history — like the term for telephone, buckey walter, which refers to a guy named Walter who, about 100 years ago, was the first guy in town with a phone, and he charged people a buckeye nickel to use it.

The fun part that we didn't know before is that Boontling is loaded with dirty words, or stand-ins for dirty words, even though the Chron is too prudish to tell us any of them besides the word for having sex: burlappin'.

[Chron]

Is there a San Francisco accent? According to a 1984 article written by then Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte, there is a unique San Francisco way of speaking. Or at least, there was.

"There is a distinctive San Francisco way of talking and it is important to make note of it, for the record, before it becomes as dead as Latin," Nolte wrote, saying that even then native San Franciscans were losing their culture due to the rising influx of out-of-towners. Chief among the features of a real San Franciscan was a tendency to string words together, avoid the San Francisco Magazine at all costs and of course never, ever call it "Frisco."

The article captures a now long-lost language which we're reading as if in a North Dakota accent, just for fun. Here are some things a native San Francisco might have been heard saying:

"If those guys up there are so smart, what'er they doin' livin' there? People who live in Gurneyville all year are a buncha Okies anyway."

San Franciscans call the movie theater "the show," as in "I went to the show last week, and jeez, the guy behind me was coffin all through the pitcher. I couln'n' hardly stant it."

"Sampencisco," "Thecity," "Sannazay" and "Sannacruise."

Although the San Franicisco accent may have become nothing more than a linguistic footnote, certain behaviors and characterists of native San Franciscan's still hold true. For instance, Nolte's note that "'The River' is the Russian River, and no other, but 'the Lake' is Lake Tahoe only if your family was wealthy" sounds about right, as does his observation that once you've realized someone else is from S.F., your first reaction is invariably to ask what high school he or she went to, although the associations to be drawn are different than they once were.

"If, for example, the answer is "S.I." you know the man went to St. Ignatius High and was probably raised a Catholic and is from an upper-middle-class family. If the person says "Mission" or "Bal" (for Balboa High) you know he is from the Mission District, and his father was probably a member of the working class, called "a workin' man" in the San Francisco dialect. If he went to Lowell, he may well be Jewish; if he went to Galileo, he is probably a North Beach Italian, and not a Mission District Italian."

Things hella change, but not everything. "The Richmond district is always called "The Richmond," and the Sunset District is always called "The Sunset," but Noe Valley has no article in front of its name; neither does downtown or North Beach. No one knows why."

[SFGate]

Today, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom asked for people to stop using the "r-word" (in vulgar parlors: "retard," "retarded") in conversation and written text. Although we suspect any campaign to end argot has the reverse effect, you can visit www.r-word.org for more details. And, yeah, you shouldn't use such terms. It's mean.

The former, obviously. However, according to this Bank of America ad, it's just dandy to preface "Muni" with a definite article. Wanna fight about it? Fine. Head over to Muni Diaries or Language Log where heated linguistic debates are in progress.

Bait alert: We should point out that, of course, using "the" in front freeway numbers, so says your righteous SoCal-born editor, is not only acceptable but encouraged.

[Muni Diaries] [Lang Log]

We hate shit like this.

66-year-old Santa Clara ice cream man Santokh Singh Sajan made some dirty comments to underage ice cream patrons the others day. Sounds bad, right? And according to the Merc:

Sajan allegedly made sexually inappropriate comments to two teenage girls, police said. He was booked Tuesday on charges of three counts of annoying a child - misdemeanors, according to police.

The ice cream vendor, who drives white van that plays music as it drives slowly through the neighborhoods, allegedly made the comments to a 14-year-old Tuesday afternoon as she bought ice cream on the 3200 block of Firth Way, police said.

An investigation revealed that Sajan allegedly made similar comments to a 14-year old in the same neighborhood twice before in recent days.

And...what the fuck were those questionable comments? Frustrating. While we're at it, the Gate's manners are just as pristine. Regarding Jane Fonda's interview on NBC's "Today" show, the Daily Dish sort of informs us that:

She said, "I live in Georgia; I was asked to do a monologue called [Bleep] and I said, 'I don't think so, I've got enough problems.'"

She was, in fact, "asked to do a monologue called Cunt..." (Watch Fonda in FCC-baiting action here.) Anyway, you'd think that by now it was okay to throw down the four-letter word in print. We the public demand to know what our ice cream vendors/sexual predators are whispering in the ears of our youth.

If you're hankering to see a Sixth Sense-ish "horror-drama hybrid," look no further.

Don't bother reading the reviews. Pft. Just get on out there and check it out.

We're not saying is perfect, but it's entertaining. And it certainly satisfied the preview audience at the Lumiere Theatre last month. So, who are you not to go?

Currently playing at the New Kabuki and the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco. See you there!

-- Marga Gomez: Multiaward-wining lesbian/Latina comic makes her Plush Room debut with Joshua Raoul Broday on the ivories, and former Mornings on 2 personality and comedian, Mark Pitta. Show starts at 8 p.m., the Empire Plush Room, 940 Sutter; $20.

-- Hard Eight (aka Sydney): Before making Magnolia, the sprawling masterpiece about fate and The Valley, Paul Thomas Anderson made his debut with Hard Eight. The visibly-boney Gwyneth Paltrow plays a cocktail waitress/whore in this crime drama. Shows at 8:50 p.m. at the Castro Theatre, Castro & Market Streets; $6-$9.

-- Jon Crocker: Folk-Americana/punk gem sings bouncy yet melancholic tunes at an intimate show in SOMA. He goes on at 7 p.m. (followed by open-mike night at 8 p.m.) at Brainwash Laundry, 1122 Folsom; free.

-- Seth Lerer's Inventing English: a Portable History of the Language: Lerer reads from his latest book, sparks lively debate about the future of the English language. Tonight at 7 p.m., Sunset Branch Library (Lower Level), 1305 - 18th Ave.; free.

Hey, does anyone know what the mayor of San Francisco's up to?

--M&R report that Gavin has been attending rehab sessions every day this last week -- some as individual sessions with the head of Delancey Street, and some as group sessions, and his community service will take the form of activities he was already doing as mayor. He's dealing with "interpersonal issues, friendship issues, and issues that have been locked up for some time and have had him sabotaging himself." However, political science experts think the whole apology-rehab thing is a bad move: "It's a joke."

--Meanwhile, Gavin opened his reelection campaign office today, to a packed house and upbeat mood. No replacement for Alex Tourk has been named, and Newsom's father said that Gavin's sister has been trying to talk to him about his drinking for some time.

--As requested, here's the clip of Stephen Colbert mocking Gavin Newsom for destroying straight marriages from last Wednesday. You have to watch the ad first, though, sorry.

--While the South Bay donors are by and large okay with Gavin, one VC who knows Alex Tourk has issued a statement that he will not be donating any more money to the Newsom campaign.

--Rumor has it that the Tourks are moving out of the Bay Area.

--There's a webpage just of jokes that Jay Leno's made about Gavin Newsom.

--And William Safire's On Language column today is called "Culpa for Mayor," but it's just about grammatical errors he's made involving the subjunctive tense, and not about mayors taking responsibility for things. Would that it ....!