this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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How different languages laugh online (restofworld.org)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (8 children)

In Portuguese I've seen also the following:

  • haha - kind of "default" laugh. Onomatopoeia.
  • hehe, hihi, hoho - "specific purpose" laughs. "Hehe" is smug, "hihi" is that poorly disguised laugh, and "hoho" is Santa Klaus style.
  • kkkkk - the letter K is called ⟨cá⟩ [kä] in Portuguese, so this represents some really loud cackling. More to the original spirit of "lmaaaaaaaaao".
  • hueahuea - it's H plus some random combo of U/E/A. Uncontrolled laughs. Likely the origin of the "hue hue" meme. Can be further reinforced by bashing the keyboard randomly, as "huahuaeilohauerhlçafdsaç".
  • "morri" (I died) - same spirit as Italian "muoio".

In Italian I've seen mostly "ahah" and "muoio" (mentioned by the text), plus "mdr" (the text mentions it for French) at least once.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I've seen the kkkkkkk one in Korean as well, though they use their letter for k. Which looks a bit like a backwards F.

I've been learning a bit of Chinese with a native speaker I'm dating, and they use the "hahaha" style as well. Although because their language is pictorial, they have certain characters which represent only their sounds for onomatopoeia/loanwords (I think these are called "bound forms"). The Chinese 哈 is literally just the sound "ha!" So one way of representing laughter in Chinese is 哈哈哈.

plus "mdr" (the text mentions it for French) at least once.

That's interesting considering the French word "mort" doesn't contain the letter D. I wonder where the abbreviation is coming from.

[–] ultimitchow 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"mdr" is short for "mort de rire" which means "dead from laughter" https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/mort_de_rire

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Ah. That makes more sense

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