interjection #603

Meanings

  1. 1 ha (laughter)
  2. 2 to breathe out; to exhale on
  3. 3 aha (surprise, recognition)
  4. 4 to be infatuated with; to adore
  5. 5 husky (dog)

Examples

HSK 1
Hā, wǒ jiù zhīdào!
Aha, I knew it!
HSK 7-9
Hāhāhā, tài hǎoxiào le!
Hahaha, that's so funny!
HSK 7-9
Tā hā le hā shǒu qǔnuǎn.
He exhaled on his hands to warm them up.

Tips

register
Two other readings split off into compound-only territory. Capitalized is the proper-noun reading used as an abbreviation in country and city names - 哈萨克斯坦 (Kazakhstan) and 哈尔滨 (Harbin); same syllable, just flagged as a name. Third-tone hǎ appears almost exclusively in 哈巴狗 (pug / pekingese; figuratively a sycophant) and in dialect speech meaning to scold. For everything else - laughter, transliterations like Harvard / Harry / Manhattan / Häagen-Dazs, husky dogs, and 哈欠 (yawn) - use first-tone hā.
memory
Mouth radical on the left, on the right: an open mouth letting out a breath - exactly what you do when you laugh, yawn, or fog up a window with .

Components

radical
kǒu
mouth
Mouth radical on the left - also 's indexing radical (Kangxi #30). Direct semantic match for an interjection: is purely a mouth-noise, the sound of laughter or surprise. Same radical in a huge family of speech and onomatopoeia chars: , , , , .
phonetic
join; close together
Right side supplies the sound: hé shifted to hā via vowel change. Same phonetic in , , , - the cluster spans h-/g-/d-/t- readings due to deep Old Chinese variation. Pure phonetic role; the joining meaning of is irrelevant to the laugh-noise sense here.

Stroke Order