They say if you want to understand the future, you have to look at children. And if my 10-year-old cousin’s chat history is any indication, we will soon be communicating in emoji, Egyptian hieroglyphics or some other kind of pictographic language that renders the 2,000-year-old Roman alphabet obsolete.

Sometimes she sends me full e-mails like this (except it goes on forever): . It either means ‘My cat ate my homework,’ or it’s the Five Stages of Grief in a single word. I’m not really sure.

Anyway, there is a mobile app for that. It’s called Zlango and it’s backed by Benchmark Capital, Accel Partners and DAG Ventures.

Zlango is a mobile chat app that is on emoticon crack cocaine. Instead of pure text-based chats, it supports emoticons married to words. There are standard packs of pictures in the app, but users can upgrade and pay for new packs of themed emoticons using virtual currency. There are Walking Dead-themed packs, Terminator-themed images and ones that draw their inspiration from anime. When you type words in Zlango, it will auto-suggest different emoticons from its library of more than 1,000 free images.

Mock it as you may, but the app has a few hundred thousand active users every day, which is good for a mobile app that is not a game and is only on one smartphone platform, Android. It came out last October and has delivered 10 billion icons so far. Plus, it had been growing at a 20 to 25 percent month-over-month rate in April.

Zlango is unusual in that it takes a business model from the gaming world and applies it to texting. There are plenty of chat apps out there, but many are very advertising-dependent like Pinger or are paid apps like WhatsApp. By using virtual currency, Zlango can make consumers a little less price sensitive because they’re not paying for packs with real dollars.

The company, which is based in Tel Aviv, has a long history after being founded in 2006. It’s one of those pre-smartphone era companies that is crossing over into an iOS-Android ruled world with a host of feature phone users around the world. Zlango used to rely more on pre-install deals with mobile carriers, but now it needs to go down the direct consumer route. The chief executive Roni Haim came in a few years ago after several telecom and electronics startups, including Alvareon, Gilat Satellite Networks and Foxcom.

“Black and white text is very nostalgic,” Haim said. “Going forward, people will want to send text with images, pictures and videos to express themselves creatively and personalize how they communicate.”

The company hasn’t taken any funding since a $12 million round five years ago and Haim says he has no immediate plans to follow up with more capital.

Zlango, a goofy but fun icon-based text messaging app, just hit one million U.S. users on the Android platform only four months after launching. Backed by Accel and Benchmark Capital, the app originally arrived in the U.S. market in October 2011, following the opening of its San Francisco-based offices. In total, Zlango now boasts over 5 million users worldwide, the company reports.

The fact that Zlango is achieving this level of popularity on Android in such a short timeframe, is indicative of the type of apps Android users still seem to prefer – apps that replace Android’s core components. In Zlango’s case, the app offers an admittedly silly take on the concept of text messaging, offering packs of icons that let you replace words with emoticons and pictograms. It clearly seems aimed at a younger audience, because, let’s face it – no self-respecting 30-year old is going to send out picture messages like this. But that fact, too, is interesting. Many of Android’s success stories to date have been ports of popular iPhone apps, general purposes apps (like Any.DO) or utilities – not those aimed at such a specific, younger demographic.

For comparison purposes, Any.DO reached half a million downloads in just 30 days. Meanwhile, Evernote’s Skitch app for Android, an arguably more well-known brand, saw 3.5 million downloads in just 3 and half months post-launch. So hitting a million in four months, while not quite on those levels, is still indicative of some relatively decent traction. Even more so given its limited appeal to older users.

Zlango now supports over 25 languages, is available in over 20 countries, and has delivered more than 9 billion Zlango icons worldwide. It’s currently seeing the most traction in Europe, Asia and the U.S. The app, which is also available for BlackBerry, Nokia and J2ME, is available here on the Android Market.

For those of you unfamiliar with Zlango, the company created a new language based on slightly over 200 icons in categories such as People, Actions, Places and Feelings. The Zlango offering was originally aimed at injecting life and excitement into the ever popular but boring SMS, however, the company’s jump into the Web space indicates an understanding that engaging users requires Zlango to extend itself beyond a pure mobile play.

Today’s launch kicks off Zlango’s roll out of a number of social-oriented features. Two of the most notable features available today are:

• Zlango Composer – A Flash driven composer featuring an on-the-fly “Text to Zlango” translator (see screenshot), making it a snap to create fun messages. Messages can be shared, emailed or embedded across a number of social sites (thanks to integration with Gigya).
• zMess – Zlango’s version of a micro-blog. This is an area for users to view public messages, or private ones with groups of friends. Unfortunately, support for threaded comments is not included.

Here is Zlango’s promotional video for the launch:

By year’s end Zlango intends to add support for user generated content, allowing users to add their own icons, contribute content (videos and books), as well as generate personalized merchandise (t-shirts, caps, etc.). Also on the horizon are an API, browser extensions and a Facebook app.

On the business front, the most notable achievement of the year is a partnership with Nokia to preload the Zlango into handsets. Zlango is now also deployed at all three Israeli operators, and has inked deals with operators in the Philippines, Ukraine, Malaysia, Finland, and Indonesia.

Zlango is a phone based application that has grown through close relationships with carriers, who see Zlango as a way to drive higher SMS usage or by a flat fee. Zlango is currently partnered with Pelephone in Israel, Orange & Cellcom in ESC, P4 in Poland, and bMobile in the Caribbean.

The funding comes close the Accel’s recent hiring of mobile expert Richard Wong, of early mobile browser company OpenWave. The relationship between the two firms seems to have recovered since Accel loosing a partner, Peter Fenton, to Benchmark Capital last April.

TechCrunch also has coverage.

Israel-based Zlango will announce a $12 million round of financing tomorrow, led by BenchMark Capital and Accel Partners. The company launched the Zlango icon-based SMS service in the middle of 2006, and has expanded to three countries (Israel, Poland and certain Caribbean cell phone carriers). The press release for the financing (see bottom of post) was written in Zlango with an English translation (a nice touch).

The company has created an entirely new language based on pictures. Users learn the language, which substitutes pictures for words and phrases, and use it to send text messages. Where Zlango is live, users can either download it directly or go through their carriers to use the software.

The fun with Zlango doesn’t stop with the press release, either. The company has created a music video to the Beatles song Drive My Car using Zlango (embedded above), and you can create your own Zlango messages on this page and email them to friends or embed them on any website.

I liked Zlango when I first saw it last year because they’ve created a new language. In the future, the company says, users will be able to create their own icons for personal use. And then users can start to put those icons into the Zlango community, where they will be voted on and possibly included into the language. So just like any other language, Zlango will evolve over time based on usage patterns.

About 100 various handsets are now supported by Zlango. Here’s the press release:

The language is based on icons, or pictures. Each icon has a specific meaning – a person pointing to himself for “me” or a heart for “love”. There are over 200 icons included in the Zlango language today.

Users of the service download a thin 64K Java or Brew application for their GSM or CDMA phone. The application converts the icons into a SMS message and then re-translates back to icons at the receiver phone. To see how it works visually, check out the flash tour here and then try out the simulator here.

At first glance this is nothing more than a nifty piece of mobile software and a way to send icon based messages over inexpensive and ubiquitous SMS networks.

But I think the cultural implications of Zlango may be much deeper.

First, two users can communicate using Zlango even if they do not speak the same language. The cross-cultural implications are obvious.

Second, Zlango is not a static language. Rarely used icons will disappear over time, and new icons will be added to the language. One thing that isn’t clearly addressed on the site, though, is whether users will be able to evolve the language directly as happens with spoken language. Allowing users to create, use and share their own icons, some of which will eventually make it into mainstream usage, will be critical for Zlango’s success in my opinion.

Zlango claims that user testing shows that “the majority of youth who tried it, felt comfortable to say that they commanded the language in less than one hour.” After testing the simulator for just a few minutes, I believe that to be true. Complex messages can be created in just a few keystrokes, much faster than normal SMS.

I don’t know if this will catch on with users or not – we’ll have to wait for the upcoming launch to see. Downloading the software is certainly a barrier to adoption and I suspect Zlango will focus on doing deals with carriers to build this directly into phones. They’ll need mass adoption quickly to ensure that copycat services don’t destroy the potential network effect before it has time to establish itself. But all that being said, it’s intruiging to see the birth of a new icon-based language and watching this spread virally, or not, will be interesting. Watch for updates on the Zlango blog.