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I started learning Japanese very recently. The spelling of やっぱり (yappari) seems odd to me. The second letter in やっぱり is tsu in hiragana (っ) which is not pronounced. Why?

Earthliŋ
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Sayan
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    Please see [this question](http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/751/how-did-little-tsu-become-a-lengthener). – Earthliŋ Jul 11 '15 at 01:33
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    I can't answer your question, but seeing as you are new to Japanese, you may find it interesting to know (if you don't already) that yappari is a more informal pronunciation of yahari. Also, in traditional kana usage, geminate consonants were represented by a fullsized tsu rather than a small one. I'm quite interested to know why tsu was chosen for this purpose and will do my own research... – James Edwards Jul 11 '15 at 10:40

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やっぱり = 矢{や}張{は}り.

If you pronouce 張 as ぱ, the entity would become やぱり which sounds awkward. To facilitate the pronunciation, we insert っ. The 'っ' character is the reason why there's 2 p's. For more detail look at this -> http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E4%BF%83%E9%9F%B3%E4%BE%BF.

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eltonjohn
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