To la or not to la

I met this friend of mine a few months back in college. He was a foreign student from Dubai studying the same course as me. Whenever a conversation between him and a typical Malaysian student begins, he would have this sort of perplexed look on his face, as if he couldn't quite understand what was being said. I've always wondered why this was the case.

So out of curiosity, I went on to ask him why? The answer that he gave turned out to be a complete surprise to me. It actually turns out that 'typical' Malaysian student would almost always add a "la" behind every sentence. For example, "Why are you doing this la!", or "I'll give the file tomorrow la." or, "Let's go eat la.". This becomes very confusing for my poor friend as back home, "la" actually means "no". That meant for every single day of his life here in Malaysia, he's been hearing us Malaysians saying "No" to every sentence we speak! All this would explain why he would sometimes look lost in our conversations.

Fortunately after a few months later, he has gotten the hang of this local slang of ours, and it seems that he is beginning to master its infectious properties. Now, he would freely spray a string of "la's" in his conversation with Malaysians. This just goes to show that whenever there's a need to blend into society, humans will always find ways to do it eventually~la!