Friday 22 April 2016

suffixes - Adding っぷり to a word: Does this have some easily defined meaning?


I came across the following sentence in a Manga:


コケっぷりもかわいいです。


and I looked the sentence up in the translated Manga, where I found something like (translation was into German):



And she's also really funny. (Hach, und urkomisch ist sie auch noch)


I found コケ in a dictionary meaning "fool", so my first try would have been something like:


She's a bit foolish, but sweet.


But the っぷり is the missing element which I couldn't find anywhere. Does this modify the meaning of コケ in a specific way? Can it be used to modify other words as well? (According to google, it can, it seems to work even for nouns and verbs)


I also found this: http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/nichigen/menu7_folder/symposium/pdf/8/01.pdf during my research, but couldn't make too much sense of it.


So, my question is: What does っぷり do? What kind of language/situation can it be used in (more informal, formal, ..)? How does it help me arrive at the translation suggested by the translator?



Answer



The biggest mistake you have made is in trusting that translation, which is not even close to the original.


コケ does not mean "fool"; It is not even a noun. It is from the verb こける, which means "to trip over", "to fall down", etc.


っぷり comes from ふ り, which means "the manner / way in which one performs an action".



食べっぷりがいい, for instance, means that someone eats a lot. 歌いっぷりがお父さんにそっくりね means "The way you sing really resembles your father's."


Thus, コケっぷりもかわいいです means "The way (someone) trips over is also cute." This phrase is very informal but certainly not slanguish at all. The コケ part is in katakana because こける is a fairly informal verb and it looks and feels lighter and more animated written in katakana. The "regular" version is ころぶ.


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