daroo: what does this phrase indicate specifically? My initial interpretation would be "why did this happen" but I'm always interested to learn new parlance
it’s a bit of Manglish um, so basically Malay, Chinese etc doesn’t have an equivalent for ‘the’ so when novices try to translate their thoughts to speak in English they say things like “he saw dog go chase him” which is Malay would be “dia nampak anjing pergi kejar dia” word for word or they end up using ‘the’ in the wrong sequence in a sentence.
originally i heard this from my classmate aaaaaaaages ago so I’m not sure where she learned it from but I’m sure it’s a rough translation of a casual Malay phrase “Kenapa pula?” which is uuuhh “why?” but “pula” in this case indicates a question/plea/demand for a reason for the ‘why’ inquiry (other indications include ‘oh it’s him’ [dia pula] in either a tone of realisation, relief or disappointment lol).
In summary: “Pula” doesn’t translate to “reason” (I don’t know enough linguistics to know the right term for these kinda words) but “Kenapa pula?” can roughly mean “Why so/did this happen?” so in Manglish you get sentences like “Why like dis wan?” or “why the because?”
I personally use “why the because” in a mocking tone though...but I’m a poor example lol pls don’t imitate me