555

For the longest time, I thought the following messages I received from my Thai colleagues on messenger, email or sms sounds weird:

"I didn't know that, too. 555"

or

"Really? 555"

or whatever else the message, and followed by

"555"

It took me quite a while to realise what it means. "555" simply means "hahaha". Meaning, that's the sound you make when you laugh. To explain further, it's the laughter that goes with haa haa haa. In Thai, the very word for the number five (5) is "ha". As such the Thais use this in their daily texting and messaging language to denote laughter.

I was reminded of this again today when I heard a jingle in the taxi that went ha ha ha ha ha. Only the guy singing the jingle wasn't laughing; he was only verbalising the phone numbers with a lot of fives in it.

555