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How different languages laugh online
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this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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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.
That's interesting considering the French word "mort" doesn't contain the letter D. I wonder where the abbreviation is coming from.
For French it's how ultimitchow said. For Italian (I saw it being used in Italian) it's probably similar, something like muoio/morto/morire dal ridere (I die/dead/to die of-the laughing).
Regarding Chinese varieties, it's less that the language is "pictorial" and more that the writing system contains both semantic and phonetic components, and often the same character can be read multiple ways. That ⟨哈⟩ for example seems to mean originally "a mouthful" or similar, but it's being used for /ha˥/ instead for obvious reasons.
"mdr" is short for "mort de rire" which means "dead from laughter" https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/mort_de_rire
Ah. That makes more sense