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Author: Ben Klemens
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Mail: ben@klemens.org
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Submitted: xxx
This proposal requests the addition of a FALAFEL emoji to a future version of the Unicode Standard. The emoji food set is lacking in Middle Eastern and North African foods, and in unambiguously vegetarian, kosher, or halal foods outside of fruits and vegetables. A falafel emoji fills these gaps.
Falafel is a ball of fried chickpeas or fava beans, and is popular in the Middle East and North Africa, and increasingly throughout the world. One of its key advantages is that it accommodates a range of food preferences: given reasonable care in preparation, it is vegan and vegetarian, halal, and kosher (for the remainder of this proposal, "VHK")
The proposed emoji would picture three falafel balls, with one in the center split open to reveal the green interior of the ball.
The food category in the emoji set includes a wide range of fruits and vegetables, but very little else that is VHK. For example, cheeses may not be VHK due to rennet, and the Japanese origins of emoji have led to a wide range of explicitly or likely shellfish-based food emoji. The current emoji set has good representation of foods from the American and East Asian regions, but very little from the Middle East and North Africa.
Google's heavily English-language database indicates that the usage of "falafel" is roughly as popular as "croissant", and noticeably more popular than some of the Japanese food emoji (see figure). The figure includes "sweet potato", which is more popular in Google's database but clearly seasonal, while Falafel shows consistent usage.
The ideal falafel is briefly fried so that the exterior is brown, but the interior remains green. The brown-to-green pattern is distinctive and easily recognized even at small resolutions.
Middle Eastern food has almost no representation in emoji. Distinctive foods commonly found in the melting pot of Middle Eastern cuisine such as shakshuka or baklava are missing. Döner kebab has an emoji, though the proposal (UTC document L2/15-084) makes only brief reference to its Turkish origins and instead bills it as "Germany's most favorite fast food snack." Falafel would be the first VHK Middle Eastern food represented in emoji.
Falafel has a level of specificity comparable to many other emoji, such as those for the croissant, bento box, or döner kebab.
Falafel recipes are largely uniform, so there is no need for additional emoji for different falafel subtypes.
Closely comparable emoji are not reasonable substitutes for falafel. As above, a key feature of falafel is that it is unambiguously VHK.
Döner kebab is wrapped in a manner that bears a visual similarity to some forms of falafel, but is an entirely distinct food.
Falafel is often served in the form of a stuffed pita, but the stuffed flatbread emoji is designed to be ambiguous about its contents---and even whether the flatbread is a pita at all, or a frybread or focaccia. "Emoji Additions Tranche 6: More Popular Requests and Gap Filling" (UTC document L2/15 195R2) does propose "falafel" as an alias, but the proposal describes "ingredients, such as meat, vegetables, and condiments", and the proposed character in that document shows brown strips that can not be falafel.
In some parts of the world, falafel is available only as street food served in a wrap or pita, but it is just as often eaten as typical plated food served at home or in a restaurant. Expressing the latter use with existing emoji, for example via STUFFED FLATBREAD + FORK AND KNIFE WITH PLATE, may leave significant ambiguity that the author is writing about flatbread containing primarily falafel, minus the flatbread.
The plot above from Google's database shows consistent usage of "falafel" since 2004. Before that date, falafel has been consumed in the Middle East and nearby areas for a millennium or more.
Falafel as street food is served as a wrap or in a flatbread, so sequencing it before KEBAB (picured in a wrap) facilitates the FALAFEL + KEBAB and the FALAFEL + STUFFED FLATBREAD pairs, which could transform the wrap and flatbreat emoji into unambiguous representations of a falafel wrap or pita.