Wiktionary suggests that both el-oh-el and lawl/lohl (IPA /ˌɛlˌoʊˈɛl/, /lɑːl/, /loʊl/) are possible, but I’m wondering if there are some more fine-grained distinctions between when people say which pronunciations. Urban Dictionary gives lots of examples of words beginning with lol, but no pronunciation guides that I could find. Personally, I never use the lawl pronunciation (this sounds too American to my Canadian ears), but I do use both the spelled-out version and the one that sounds like loll as in loll about.
So when do I use which one? I would never pronounce each letter individually in a context where lol combines with something else. Common internet examples for this are LOLcat, lolwut, and lols/lolz. Other portmanteaux (lolmanteaux?) that I’ve used in very informal contexts but I’m not sure are as well-known are lolgasm, loltastic, and lolmazing.
On the other hand, in the reduplicated construction lololol (etc.), I think I would want to pronounce all of the letters separately. However trolololol goes back to rhyming with pole. If the word is written in all caps, I think I would also be more likely to pronounce all the letters, but in general I’m noticing that these days people don’t write lol in all caps unless they really want to emphasize it.
In general, I think I have a moderate preference for the single-syllable pronunciation, but this is probably not absolute. It’s a bit difficult to think of how one would pronounce words that are mostly used in writing anyway.
In a related note, I seem to almost always pronounce LMAO/lmao as el-mao, but LMFAO (the band’s name, or the acronym) always gets el-em-eff-ay-oh.
How do you pronounce lol and its relatives?
