In Australia, where I live, it is not uncommon for people to describe something as "a bit 'how ya goin''" to mean that it's a little bit dodgy, or not quite right. An example is
"Hey don't you have a new coworker?"
"Yeah, they're a bit 'how ya goin'"
which would mean that the new coworker is maybe a bit weird or not a good fit in the office. I've also heard it to refer to other-than-humans:
"How's the uni course?"
"It's a bit 'how ya goin'"
which would mean that the course isn't going well, but implying that there's a problem with the course itself. I would expect a follow-up closer to "the timetable doesn't fit and the lecturers are terrible" rather than "the course is great but I haven't studied enough".
I had thought it might be connected to/descended from the English phrase "how's your father", but I haven't found any evidence of that and the 'how ya goin' version doesn't have any lewd connotations, as far as I know.
Does anybody know where this phrase comes from, and why it's used in this context? Urban dictionary lists it as Australian slang, but I would love to know if it exists anywhere else. It's a hard one to google, as "origin of phrase 'how are you going'" doesn't yield great results, for obvious reasons.
Best Answer
The phrase refers to the social class of the speaker, as in 'How ya goin' is originally something a lower or working class person would say in post WW I Australia. So it means dodgy or unsure of the reliability. However it has become nonsensical because the phrase 'how's it going?' has run around the world like a bushfire since the 1970's. The main theory behind this is that it was used often in Australian surfing culture in the 1960-70's and picked by Californian surfers, by the 1980-90's it was heard in Hollywood movies and from there it 'How's it goin' has become popular slang just about everywhere.