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I'm currently reading a Japanese children's book, and a character says 「金色の葉っぱだ」 I'm assuming the 「っぱだ」 is like saying 「たくさん」 or 「いっぱい」, but I don't actually know. Any help is appreciated!

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2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

葉{は}っぱ is a word. It means leaf!

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Thanks! The author uses 葉 by itself in a previous sentence, which threw me off. – Timmy Nov 15 '12 at 23:57
up vote 9 down vote

As snailplane says, for practical purposes, just think of 葉っぱ as a word meaning 'leaf'. In colloquial speech 葉っぱ is probably more common than 葉.

I haven't been able to find decisive evidence, but I conjecture that the っぱs occuring in (at least) the below words

葉っぱ
原っぱ
下っ端
木端微塵{こっぱみじん}

is the same morpheme, meaning "something unimportant", "edge", "small piece" etc. Maybe someone else can confirm this.

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You may want to clarify the relation between your answer and snailplain’s answer. I think that you agree with snailplane’s answer and that you are trying to answer “What is っぱ then?” as the next step, but this is probably not clear to everyone (hence the low score). – Tsuyoshi Ito Nov 14 '12 at 20:09
Thanks @TsuyoshiIto, I edited it a bit. – dainichi Nov 15 '12 at 1:12
Thanks for clarifying the use of っぱ in this context! Shines some light on the difference in connotation between 葉 and 葉っぱ. – Timmy Nov 15 '12 at 23:50

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