I’ve noticed some people say “hahaha” and others say “hahahah”. Which are you?
When spoken, how do they sound different? Isn’t the final “h” silent?
My wife’s uncle and family in Kentucky pronounce the final h.
Sorry, I mean via email/IM/SMS
Other—because I haven’t ever put that in email/IM/texting.
Hahahah. Not sure why – I guess I like symmetry.
Mine are both, in a “Haha” to “Hahah” ratio of about 10:1. “Hahah” is always a typo.
I think in text messages etc it’s spelled LOL.
I have sometimes pronounced the h at the end, but you can do that with any word in English because final aspirations are not phonemic. I never spell it like that, because the single word is spelled “ha,” not “hah,” and it’s just three "ha"s done quickly in a row. I mean, I don’t write hohohoh, either.
Lemme ditto that question. What is a final h supposed to sound like?
I’ve read this about Hebrew too. A great many words end with a final h. One well-known example: תּוֹרָה (Torah). It’s very common because it’s also the ending for a great many nouns in the feminine gender. What I’ve read is that the final h is to be pronounced just like any other consonant would be. (Huh?)
This is especially confusing to me, because in Hebrew the “h” sound (the letter “hay” ה ) is a very weak sound, very nearly silent in any case, even at the beginning of a syllable.
Heheheh.
i’ve heard it pronounced EL OH EL
Hahaha, what a great idea for a poll.
The technical description is in the post above yours. For a more layman’s description: you continue breathing out, even after you’ve stopped your voice. You probably do it when you do a refreshing “Ah!” after, say, a drink or something. It basically means whispering the vowel. People do it all the time, but they just don’t notice because it has no meaning in English. (That’s why I said it was non-phonemic.)
In Hebrew it might be a little different, as there is more than one way to pronounce [h]. In English, we usually just aspirate the vowel–what I described above. But, in other languages, [h] can actually be a fricative, meaning you constrict the air so that it makes a sound when it comes out. In the case of [h], it sounds similar to , the sound at the beginning of Chanukah, but is less harsh sounding. Kind of halfway between the American [h] and the Hebrew .
That word is increasingly pronounced as if it were spelled loll. It’s particularly common in the plural, as in “all the LOLZ.”
I split the difference.
Haha!
Hah!