Your brain automatically translates wtf but not lol
I learned in Marketing class that it’s because… when an acronym has a vowel in it, 95% of people automatically read it as a word.
LOL is being read as “lawl” because its having a vowel makes it pronounceable. On the other hand, WTF’s lack of vowels makes the brain see it as non-pronounceable. That’s why most people read “WTF” as the words it actually stands for: “what the fuck”.
The percentage I stated will differ depending on a population’s native language. If your mother tongue is phonetic, meaning the words are read the way they’re spelled, such as in Spanish, then 95%, give or take, applies. But if the opposite is true, like in French where a word’s spelling has absolutely fuck all to do with its pronunciation, then it will surely be lower than 95%.
There’s this global advertising agency called TBWA. The Americans I know who of course speak English, a non-phonetic language, pronounce it as “T-B-W-A” — they read out the letters. But since my friends and I speak Filipino or Spanish, both phonetic languages, we read it as “tib-wa”.
