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Xaxaxa. Or 5555. Or jajaja. Or haaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha. Or www. Or jajaja. Or MDR.
So, how do you laugh, on the Internet, in other languages? Here — haaaaaaaaaahahaha — is a starting guide from Preply, the online language platform. They mapped how the world laughs online in 26 different languages.
According to Amy Pritchett, learning success manager at Preply:
“When you say something funny online, the usual response might be something like “LOL.” Or “ha.” Or, if you say something outrageously hilarious, it might require excessive laughter such as “hahahahahaha.”
But what if we weren’t speaking English? What if we were chatting in Japanese, Mandarin, or Spanish? We wanted to explore internet culture in different languages and how it can vary with something as joyful as laughter.
We found that laughter varies significantly as different languages render it in letters, numbers, and characters. Laughter transcends language but also, online, utterly relies on it.”
Here are 11 ways people laugh online in different languages:
Chinese (Mandarin): 哈哈 or 呵呵
In the Mandarin alphabet, the transcription of “haha” is 哈哈 and pronounced xiào shēng. Mandarin also relies on onomatopoeia for laughter: 哈哈, pronounced hā hā, and 呵呵, pronounced he he. Similarly, xixi, 嘻嘻, suggests giggling. Mainland China uses numbers to write laughter, such as the combination “23333”.
Interestingly, the number 5, in Mandarin, is pronounced as “wu” — meaning that Thai’s “55555” would, in Chinese, be pronounced: “wuwuwuwuwu.” Similarly, since the number 8 is pronounced: “ba,” Chinese speakers sometimes use “88” to sign off or say “ba ba” (“bye-bye”).
French: hahaha, héhéhé, hihihi, hohoho; also MDR
French uses onomatopoeic laughter variations much like those in English. Like many non-English languages, it also uses the universalized “LOL” to indicate laughter. The French also have a delightful acronym: The French equivalent of LOL is MDR, which means “mort de rire,” or “dying of laughter.”
Spanish: jajaja
In Spanish, they pronounce j like the English h, so “jajaja” is the direct analog of the English “hahaha.”
Greek: xaxaxa
Same deal.
Brazilian Portuguese: huehuehue, rsrsrsrs
Same, with the vowels varying rather than the consonants.
Danish: ha ha, hi hi, hæ hæ, ho ho, ti hi
Same deal.
Icelandic: haha, hehe, híhí
Same.
Russian: – “ЛОЛ” the direct equivalent of “LOL” – haha хаха, hihi хихи, hèhè хехе
Same.
Korean: kkkkk or kekekekeke
Korean laughter comes from ㅋㅋㅋ, short for 크크크, or keu keu keu — the Korean equivalent of the English “hahaha.”
Japanese: www
No, this does not stand for ‘world wide web’ – it doesn’t stand for anything. In theory, the ‘w’ shortens from the Japanese word for ‘laugh,’ which is ‘warai.’ As the joke gets funnier, so do the number of w’s.
Thai: 55555
Here you can kill two birds with one stone – the Thai number five is pronounced ‘ha.’ Now, you can count from 5 to 5 and laugh in Thai!
