Are there any practices to use onomatopoeia in English for describing the degree of joyfulness / funniness by laughter and sorrow by crying?

Japanese use a plenty of onomatopoeia in expressing the degree and level of joyfulness / funniness when laughing and sorrow when crying, and they always come in refrains of onomatopoeia. For examples:

We laugh,’ Wat, ha, ha,” or “Kyatkya, kya” when laugh loud.

We laugh “Geta geta” or "Kero kero" when we laugh rustically.

We laugh "Niya, niya" when we laugh indecently.

We laugh “Niko, niko” when we laugh mildly, or smile.

We laugh "Hera hera" when we laugh ingratiatingly.

We laugh “Kusu, kusu” when we chuckle.

We cry “Wah wah” or “Gyah, gyah” when we cry loudly or bitterly.

We cry “Meso, meso” or “Same zame” when we weep.

We cry “Shiku, shiku” or "Beso, beso" when we snivel.

These onomatopoeia are not only uttered and heard in voice, but also writen and read in literature. I wonder if this is unique to Japanese language. I don't know if Chinese and Koreans have the similar linguistic (or behavioral) trait or not, though I understand we imported the phrase,"呵々大笑 – laugh ha, ha (loudly)” from Chinese idiom.

Though I’ve never seen the case, do Anglophones use onomatopoeia in describing the degree or level of laughter and tearful voice? If the answer is No, the case is closed.

Solution 1:

I enjoyed your question. The answer is yes, we use onomatopoeia to indicate degrees of laughter and crying.

The list that users have supplied so far (with a couple of additions from me):

Degrees of regular laughter

• yuk yuk - head-tossing or belly-holding (after a really funny joke, for example)
• ho ho - jovial and deep
• Ha ha - hearty or mild (or sometimes mocking)
• heh heh - half-hearted
• hee hee or tee hee - a peep of laughter

Context specific laughter

• bwahaha or mwahaha - evil
• nyeh-nyeh-nyeh - cackling
• nyuck nyuck - imbecilic
• har-di-har-har or har har or haw haw - sarcastic or mocking

Degrees of crying

• wah - full force
• boo hoo - mild or medium
• sniff sniff - sniveling

I don't think anyone has offered an expression for weeping.

Solution 2:

The various terms for laughing in English are:

• to cackle - to laugh sharply in a high pitch like a crow
• to giggle - a suppressed laugh
• to guffaw - a deep belly laugh
• to chuckle - an understated laugh
• to snicker, snigger - to laugh through the noise (mouth closed) at something rude

There's quite a bit more nuance and presonality to these different words than the dictionary gives. Also, this isn't a comprehensive list.

They aren't strictly onomatopoeic but they are close, some more so than others. To twitter sounds like an old lady barely laughing, to guffaw like a big fat man letting it all out.

There is also a selection of ways of spelling 'tee hee' for 'titter', 'haw haw' for 'guffaw'. But these are not set in stone. Also, the sound-words like 'tee hee' are not actually the sound that people use (for example like how a sneeze doesn't actually sound like 'atchoo' which how it is normally presented in wwriting).

Some words sound very much like what they describe (like words for animal sounds). In the other extreme, for most words for noises, there is no connection with the sound of the word and the sound itself ('to bray' for a donkey sound).

There really are no words that -are- what they describe.

So in comparison to Japanese, English doesn't seem to have such a rich set of words for laughing, and what it has is not so closely onomatopoeic, but there is something of the same system.