One of my favorite parts about traveling is learning about the differences in culture and ways that people express themselves. From the friendly “buenas” greetings you encounter daily in Central America to the bows and prayer position hello’s given and received in Thailand, every culture has ways of defining themselves that makes them beautiful and unique.
Perhaps my favorite difference, yet similarity, in expression however is the laugh… And not just the physical laugh but more specifically the written or ‘text’ laugh.
In the States, to express laughter in a text we use a variety such as LOL, LMAO, LMFAO or the most basic: hahahahahahaha!
It’s the last of those “text laughs” that you find variations for around the world, yet the sound is just the same. For example, in Spanish text they write “jajajajajaja” for a laugh because the”J” makes an “H” sound, so the resulting sound is the same as “haha”.
Just recently I’ve learned another form of text laughter in Thailand: 5555555…. Now you may wonder as most do when first coming across that as to what in the world that means. But once you know that the word, or rather the sound that the word makes, for the number 5 in Thailand is “ha”, then it all makes sense! Repeated 5’s in text literally reads as “hahahahaha!!”
Just love it! I’m curious how many other variations there are out there to express laughter in text form from different countries… If anyone knows of any more, I’d love to hear about it!
Ramblintraveler 