Apps that can help you understand emojis

Anecdotal evidence has it that mothers love emoji.

I am not one of those mothers. I had no idea my iPhone came equipped with an emoji keyboard. I'm even hopeless when I try to text emoticons. :-(

"What is that?" my 20-year-old daughter asked, referring to what I thought was a hug created out of curly brackets.

I am so clueless about emoji, in fact, that when my friend Lydia suddenly started texting me little squares with what looked like skulls in them, I had to consult my 18-year-old daughter.

"What does a skull stand for?" I asked, handing her my phone.

"Mom," she sighed. "Those are aliens. They show up when you haven't updated your operating system."

Apparently, if you are still using iOS 7 but your texting correspondent has updated to iOS 8, with all the new skin tones, those new emoji won't appear on your screen.

What I still don't understand is why Apple uses an alien to signal that. Have aliens become the universal symbol for "something is messed up here"?

And it gets worse: Emoji don't always translate from Apple to Android, or vice versa. You might send what you think is a cute yellow heart only to have your friend on Android receive a hairy pink one.

Emoji are multiplying in other ways, too. A recent WordPress update allows you to add them to blogs, and the guy who translated "Moby-Dick" into emoji is trying to make a whole language out of them, with syntax and everything. So, it's clearly time for people like me to learn to speak emoji - though, since there's no universal language, you'll have to become multilingual.

Here are some ways to get started:

Two websites - Emojipedia.org and Emoji.com - will teach you a lot about the different kinds of emoji and their meanings. With Getemoji.com, you can copy and paste emoji - no need for an app or special keyboard.

But since you'll most often be using emoji while texting, you'll probably want to have resources on your phone. Emoji Dictionary (free, iOS only) allows you to search or scroll through various categories to find the emoji you need to express what you are thinking.

Keymoji (free, iOS and Android) offers suggestions as you type and lets you use both the word and the emoji, in case you are sending a text to someone who might think "try looking in the closet" means "try being sad in the closet."

Emoji Quiz (free, iOS and Android) is a game that will familiarize you with emoji by asking you to guess the word or phrase formed by two or more emoji placed together (a car and a person swimming = carpool).

And, finally, if you really get into it, imoji (free for iOS and Android) will help you to create your own emojis.