Japanese Laughter - a Thee-for-One Deal
Aug. 27th, 2018 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmThis is so typical of the way that Japanese slang works that I had to share.
English speakers often use "lol" to indicate laughter (except when it means "lots of love", but I gather this has almost died out - David Cameron got lolled at for using it that way, I recall). The equivalent in Japanese is the kanji "笑", which comes from the verb "笑う/warau", "to laugh".
However, later, some Japanese - thinking that English was cool - decided to use the English letter "w" - the first letter of "warau" - instead. Hence you will sometimes see "wwww" being used to indicate laughter.
More recently, some other Japanese looked at those rows of "w"s and decided they looked a bit like blades of grass. So, the new way of indicating laughter is to use the kanji "草" (kusa), which means "grass."
Three classic Japanese slang-making methods in one: a) abbreviation; b) borrowing from English; c) pictograms.
English speakers often use "lol" to indicate laughter (except when it means "lots of love", but I gather this has almost died out - David Cameron got lolled at for using it that way, I recall). The equivalent in Japanese is the kanji "笑", which comes from the verb "笑う/warau", "to laugh".
However, later, some Japanese - thinking that English was cool - decided to use the English letter "w" - the first letter of "warau" - instead. Hence you will sometimes see "wwww" being used to indicate laughter.
More recently, some other Japanese looked at those rows of "w"s and decided they looked a bit like blades of grass. So, the new way of indicating laughter is to use the kanji "草" (kusa), which means "grass."
Three classic Japanese slang-making methods in one: a) abbreviation; b) borrowing from English; c) pictograms.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-27 02:10 pm (UTC)I can mark the exact instant at which "LOL = Lots of Love" died out. My friend's mom was sent a mass family email saying, "Poor old uncle Jim has bladder cancer and they say he only has three months left," to which she hit "reply all" and sent the message, "LOL!!!"
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-27 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-31 09:07 pm (UTC)