Every day, billions of people type some version of laughter into their phones. It may look effortless, but Preply’s map of 26 languages reveals that no two languages laugh in exactly the same way. In general, we see three different styles of laughter. The first are acronyms. English does this with LOL, which means “laughing out loud.” We see this as well with the French MDR, Nigerian LKWM, Jamaican DWL, and Estonian IRW. The next style is phonetic laughter, like hahaha in English, jajaja in Spanish, axaxaxa in Russian, and ههههه in Arabic. The third style is the visual pun, which includes the Thai 55555, Japanese www, and Mandarin 23333.
Some styles of laughter have layers and texture. Spanish speakers distinguish their sincere jajajaja from an ironic jejejeje or a mischievous jijijji. Greek speakers have a full taxonomy of sneaky, giggling, and evil laughter. France escalates its MDR (dead from laughing) to a more extreme PTDR or XPTDR. Polish teens say heheszki, which means “kicking and laughing.” Each entry is a small map of what a culture finds worth distinguishing.
Some laughter styles teach us something about a language itself. Italians type ahahaha instead of hahaha because their language lacks an aspirated H. Indonesians type out wkwkwk because the K sits on their keyboard’s home row, showing that sometimes keyboard shape affects typed laughter.
Linguists used to debate whether laughter was the same everywhere. If the chat window is any indication, the act of laughing may be universal, but the transcription of laughter is localized. The next time a Brazilian friend sends you a “kkkkkk” or a Japanese coworker drops a “www,” you’ll see something small but extraordinary, a culture’s laughter signature in five characters.
