¿Qué lo que?
What's up? — the Dominican greeting, abbreviated to "klk" in every message thread on the island.
Related lesson: Dominican Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
¿Qué lo que, manín? Tiempo sin verte.
What's up, mate? Long time no see.
Klk, ¿tú va pal party o qué?
What's up — are you going to the party or what?
—¿Qué lo que? —Aquí, en la lucha.
'What's up?' 'Getting by, same as ever.'
What It Actually Means
¿Qué lo que? is how Dominicans open a conversation: what’s up, what’s going on, all right. It is a greeting and not a real question — the expected answers are tranquilo, aquí, todo bien, en la lucha, none of which contain information. Younger speakers shorten it further in speech to a two-beat ¿qué lo qué? and in writing to klk, which is now legible to Spanish speakers across the Caribbean and, thanks to dembow, well beyond it.
Where It Comes From
From a full question that nobody says any more — ¿qué es lo que hay? or ¿qué es lo que pasa? — filed down to its three surviving syllables, the way Dominican Spanish files everything down. The construction is not unique (Puerto Rico has ¿qué es lo que hay?, Spain has ¿qué hay?), but the truncated shape and the klk spelling are Dominican property.
How Natives Use It
Informally, constantly, and to almost anyone your own age or younger: friends, the man at the colmado, the concho driver, a cousin you last saw in 2009. It stacks with a vocative — ¿qué lo que, manín?, ¿qué lo que, tíguere? — and can be answered with itself, which is the most Dominican exchange available: “¿Qué lo que?” “¿Qué lo que?”
Common Pitfall
Don’t answer it as though it were a question about your week. And keep the register straight: this is street and family Spanish, not something to open an email to a bank with, where buenos días still does the work. If you want the safe version everywhere in the Caribbean, ¿cómo tú tá? will do — with the pronoun in front, as Dominican grammar prefers.