London, April 29 (IANS): People are increasingly using emojis to convey their feelings and emotions, but the using pattern is influenced by the local culture, reveals an interesting new study.

Just as smartphones grew in popularity, so too have emojis. There are now more than a thousand emojis. London-based tech firm SwiftKey analysed more than a billion pieces of emoji data, organised by language and country to find out about emoji use.

According to SwiftKey's chief marketing officer, Joe Braidwood, the results were fascinating. People are mostly likely to send happy faces, the study found.

"The overall thing we noticed is that 70 percent of all emojis sent are positive and so that's probably a good thing that we're talking to each other positively and using emoji to enhance that," Braidwood was quoted as saying by www.npr.org.

"Canadians lead the charge in their use of money, violence, sports-related, raunchy, and even the poop emoji," he said.

Americans are second behind Canada in their love of violent emojis, such as guns. But one thing Americans also really love is pizza.

"Pizza was one of the most frequently used [emojis] in the US, as well as the chicken drumstick ... and I think it shows you that, versus other nations, you guys have particular food habits," Braidwood added.

In Australia, the researchers found that emojis that referenced drugs, alcohol, junk food and holidays were used much more than any other nation.

He also noted that the French really are hopeless romantics. They use heart emojis four times more than anyone else. And Arabic speakers are big fans of the rose emoji, using it 10 times more than other language speakers.

Spanish-speaking Americans used sad faces more than any other language. "The most popular emoji that they used out of the sad faces was the crying emoji," he said.