How different languages laugh online | Hacker News Reader

How different languages laugh online

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143 pointsjustanotherdot61 comments

Growing up, I would see people type "jajaja" and thought the way they laughed was literally saying "jah jah jah". It was much later that I put two and two together and realized it was Spanish and actually pronounced "hahaha".

I just love how in Japan they went from “笑う” (warau, to laugh) to “笑” (wara) to “w” to “www” to “草” (kuchi, grass, because “www” kinda looks like grass) to “大草原” (daisougen, great plain/prairie/steppe).

That feels like such an internet thing to do.

草 is "kusa", not "kuchi"

Not one mention of huahuehuahue?

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/huahuehuahue

And in World of Warcrft it's "kek"

Actually from Starcraft, it's the Korean way to say hahaha (kekeke).

I don't speak or read Korean, but I think kekeke might be a transliteration of ㅋㅋㅋ - I've seen that frequently enough in Korean language comments on YouTube that I've looked it up before. A quick web search led me to more Korean lols and hahas... https://domandhyo.com/2017/07/lol-in-korean-%E3%85%8B%E3%85%...

ㅋㅋㅋ is literally “kkk” but it’s shorthand for 크크크 (keukeukeu). There’s also ㅎㅎㅎ (hhh) that shorthand for 하하하 (hahaha). It’s much faster to just mash out those single consonants, sort of like keyboard spam laughing.

ㅎㅎㅎ is definietly not for 하하하. It's more like 흐흐흐 or 히히히, just like hehe in English.

Wasnt it bcs alliance text appeared different to horde and kek translated to lol

Yeah or the other way around. I thought I saw orcs kek’ing as an alliance character. They’d mangle text spoken in languages you didn’t know, and horde / alliance did not have any language overlap.

Correct, if you were Alliance and a Horde character near you typed "lol" it would appear as "kek".

Originally, but spread a lot by now.

German is conspicuously absent…

The german sense of humour is no laughing matter

this sentence sounds like British humor (or is it humour?)

British, yes and ‘humour’

Actually it is quite satiric and dark, not that much different from British, naturally requires good language understanding to get the jokes.

Germans and laughter go together like two north poles of a magnet.

Only for those that don't speak the language.

German humor is not that different from British dark/satiric humor and there is plenty of it around here.

I definitely don't see much German humor around here.

This place tends to be pretty dry.

I suggest attending some Poetry Slam rounds, NightWash sessions, or some mix of Dieter Nuhr, Torsten Sträter, Bülent Ceylan, Jan Böhmermann, Felix Lobrecht among others.

Plenty of humor styles to chose from.

If your language has its own word for the concept of taking pleasure in other people's misfortunes, you don't need to have any great comedians (left [0]) to be able to laugh.

Part of the family of haha, hehe and hihi is höhö in German, which can be used as a sarcastic laugh to a particularly bad joke, halfway between a ho-ho-ho and a hehe.

Also when speaking out loud, the pronunciation of lol in German is always "lol", as a word. I believe in English-speaking countries the letter by letter l-o-l is more common.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO1No7HWT6Q

Oh no[0]…

[0] https://webcomicname.com/

Speakers of different languages express laugh differently in English too.

Native English speakers write "hahaha" or "ha-ha-ha", but speakers of many Slavic languages write "ahahaha" or "a-ha-ha-ha", with leading "a".

Native English speakers write ":)", but speakers of many Slavic languages write just ")", because ":" is reused on keyboard for additional Cyrillic letters (like Ж) and they don't use it even when typing in English.

Georgians reuse not only ":დ" as ":D", but basically any English acronym "ლოლ" for lol, "ლმაო" for "lmao", because standard Georgian layout is based on English US layout and it feels natural. Exception is ROFL, because Georgian lacks "F" sound.

> Speakers of different languages express laugh differently in English too. > > Native English speakers write "hahaha" or "ha-ha-ha", but speakers of many Slavic languages write "ahahaha" or "a-ha-ha-ha", with leading "a". > > Native English speakers write ":)", but speakers of many Slavic languages write just ")", because ":" is reused on keyboard for additional Cyrillic letters (like Ж) and they don't use it even when typing in English.

Of course there's difference between eastern and western slavic languages, because western ones use latin. In those, I've mostly seen "haha", both when talking in english and in $SLAVIC. At the same time, they can easily write ":)".

They didn’t mention that in Spain most people use xD which is the emoticon of laughing in its written version. It can be used in different capitalizations: xD XD xd

Don't forget Xd, which I see used in "absurd" but funny situations.

I’m curious about “L” being a curse world in Cantonese. I looked it up but couldn’t find anything about this.

It's the word 撚 which means penis (lan2 which sounds more like "lun"). You can pretty much stick it between many words, much like "fucking" in English, to add emphasis.

I don't know for sure how accurate this is, but I'm guessing it's the first entry in this Wiktionary definition: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/L#Chinese.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%92%9A#Definitions_2

Can corroborate the previous replies; or taking the initials of the words like `sls` is common these days

Missing ones from Poland: hehehe hihihi buhahaha huehuehue

I like "lol" because the letters are so close together on the keyboard! But the Brazilian Portuguese "kkkk" is hard to beat in laughing efficiency...

There’s also bwahahaha or wakekeke.

Muahahaha pairs nicely with "Fools! I'll destroy them all!"

https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earliest-use-of-the-fools-... (it was in circulation in the 1800s)

Pfff, anything missing that Thais write 55555 (because 5 in Thai is "hâː") is missing a trick. Also, FWIW, I've always thought the numeral (when written in Thai, which is a bit unusual) looks like the cereal-spit guy ๕:

https://obs.line-scdn.net/0hTLsunG_HC2NODB-jHVl0NHZaBxJ9ahFq...

(update: oh, I scrolled down and found it. It was immune to being found with Ctrl-F)

Meanwhile, the Chinese use 555 to express the opposite emotion: crying! Because 555 (wu wu wu) sounds very similar to 呜呜呜 (also wu wu wu), an onomatopoeia for the crying sound. 555 is a bit of a dated expression nowadays though, it saw greater use during the SMS era.

It's especially interesting since "five" in both languages are cognates with each other, having descended from Old Chinese /ŋaːʔ/.

חחחחחחח is the only Hebrew one I've seen; I've never seen לול used in chats.

I've seen it, but rarely and maybe ironically. I've never seen למאו and probably wouldn't get it if I did.

Lwkmd, Laugh kill me die, Nigerians, we are just Naturally funny.

Definitely noticed that people from some countries (Eastern Europe?) write "ahahah" instead of "hahaha" when expressing amusement when writing English.

In Polish you can do both, and at least to me they feel slightly different - the first "a" represents the small pause while you quickly take in the air before you start laughing. To me this indicates an element of being surprised, and the reaction being natural. I think that "ahaha" is a lot less likely to be used sarcastically than "haha".

Anyway, those are just my intuition as a native speaker - I'm not sure whether it is universal, I never discussed this with anyone before.

As a 37 year old Polish person, I've never seen "ahahaha" used online or irl.

It's pretty much the same as you describe for me in English.

In a certain gaming community, we laugh not with "lol" but with "11", since that plays a laughing taunt. This extends to chats outside of the game itself

Why not just say aoe2? We're not a tight knit crew

skldkfşdldldjjddkldjdlslsdjkd

I’m amazed to learn that we are the only nation that uses keyboard spam for laughing. Why? It’s funny!

Nope, in Brazilian Portuguese oakspkskoapsks is a thing.

We also do rsrsrs, kkkkk, hehe, haha, hihi, ahuahauh and huehue.

A few more here:

https://zooando.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/tipos-de-risadas-do...

Funny I always used “kk” as a faster way to type “ok.”

I wonder how many times that’s been interpreted as me laughing by.

Keyboard spam is not limited to turkish youngsters, in fact it's fairly common on the internet.

My Vietnamese friends used hihihi (pronounced: heeheehee). This was years ago though

Wonderfully uplifting, I love the idea of people quacking for a good joke! (Indonesia)

We Indonesian use: wkwkwk. the more barbaric among us often use aowkoawk.

And of course hahaha, hehehe, or wakakak

A few more unique laughs I recall, in Russian:

Бгг: more of a guffaw, or a "heh"

Ржунимагу: "Laughing, I can't [stop]", close to LMAO or ROFL

Those are from the 00's and are not used anymore.

I have never seen "memeo" in a spanish chat. I saw jaja, jeje,jojo, jiji, even juju and larger variants. We also use xD (smile with closed eyes and laughtin) or longer versions like xdddddddddd or lol (loooooooool).

"Me meo" is a real expresión, but not so common, i like to say "me deshorino" like satirical expresión.

555

African and European Portuguese also use rsrsrs, LOL, hehehe.

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