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If you use 'haha', you're probably old

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Re: If you use 'haha', you're probably old

#43
What a meaningless parade of speculative bullshit. There's a science for discussions like this -- it's called corpus linguistics. There are people who have spent years of their lives trying to understand observed patterns in behavior using real data and statistical analysis. This a handful of anecdotes that even the most generative of armchair linguists would roll their eyes at.

Re: If you use 'haha', you're probably old

#44

In Arabic, people use هههه (hhhh) without vowels because of the Arabic Harakat (حَرَكَات) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics

In Japanese, people usually end a statement with "w" as it is short for 笑う (romanized: warau) which means to laugh. It even parallels "lololol" by adding more "w"s (i.e. 偶然だwww).

Re: If you use 'haha', you're probably old

#45

Interestingly enough, I use "Haha" to denote sincere laughing. Mischievous laughing goes as "Hehe"; imitating an overweight person goes "Hoho" and normally imitating a timid person (or a woman, and I swear they are not related!) goes as "Hihi."

I use "heh" to denote "I read your message, but I'm busy and I need you to stop talking to me". "I read your message, and I was mildly amused, but not enough to continue talking" is "hah". "I actually thought that was funny, but I'm still busy" is "haha". Real, actual laughter that wants to continue the conversation is "hahaha". I'm 32.

I thought this was a secret code only I knew. Now I have to conjure a different way of subliminally communicating my indisposure to chatty friends.

Also, "hehe" means "only mildly amusing, but I'm not busy so I'll keep talking". (Unless you say "hehe" after something you wrote yourself, in which case it's creepy.)

I'm 29.

Re: If you use 'haha', you're probably old

#48
post #22

All of these have different meanings to me: ha haha hah aha ahaha 'ha ha' hahaha HA HAHAHA hahahahahahah haaahaaa lol LOL LMAO lawl elohel 'ha, ha' ha. heh hehe bwahaha 'ha,' though it's really hard to describe exactly the differences between them. context: I'm in my twenties and grew up using AIM and FB and playing MMOs. I think those are all relevant to the exact 'vernacular' I've ended up with.

Don't forget "lolololololol", which is different in meaning from all those you listed. (Specifically it is a form of sardonic laughter, as in "did you hear that Trump is running for president again?" "wtf no again?? / lololololol".)
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