I talked before about how Thai people (or some, at least) laugh online: by using "5" because it is "ha" in Thai. So someone will say 555 to show laughter instead of what we do, which is "lol" (laugh out loud).
Well Austin (an interesting and nice guy who I actually know offline from my Japanese class) had another nifty idea: say "mom" when wanting to laugh online, because "haha" is mother in Japanese. So, if something is funny, instead of typing "lol," he might type "mom". The only problem is that he'll have to explain the whole thought process: how it started with a conversation about the Thai use of "ha" for 5 and how that led to the Japanese use of "ha ha", which all came from the need for an alternative to "lol."
I'm still not a fan of "lol"--it looks cumbersome.
5 comments:
How about 8 in Japanese? It's abbreviated 'ha,' so 88 would be ha-ha.
Of course, 888 would be confusing because it's 'hachi wo mitsu,' or 'hachimitsu' -- honey.
That's a stretch--you have to go through too many steps to get to "ha" if you're referring to 8. But if you use the word for "mom" then the haha is right there :)
Where have you been? Long time no see!
Yeah, that's what I intended. 88 for mom.
Although, actually it's not that far a stretch; 'ha' is a standard abbreviation for 8, for example, in phone numbers. See if you can get this 7-digit phone number:
rohani-gokunayo
Oh, sorry. Grad school, meaning, mostly the library.
Ok, I guess I've been away from Japan for too long to know the abbreviation.
When you emerge from grad school, give us an update :)
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