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pkek t1_iu6kwim wrote

As an Australian I chuckled at this

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987cayman t1_iu81g71 wrote

Yep. They should market this.

As someone living in Japan, I laughed at this because w is used like "lol" in English

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hazmatt_05 t1_iu8kqn0 wrote

> As someone living in Japan, I laughed at this because w is used like “lol” in English

The etymology (not sure if that’s the right word) for how that came to be is insane to me.

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aureyh t1_iu8st2v wrote

How is it insane? 笑う warau means laugh. Originally people just added (笑)wara at the end of a sentence or as a reaction to a joke. It got shortened to w. And like people doing lololol or looool or you know lmao, Japanese people just added more Ws.

Additionally, a long line of Ws looked like a simple drawing of grass so they started saying 草 kusa for grass.

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