meaning of 歩けなくなっちゃって

Question

I'm trying to translate 駅から歩けなくなっちゃって. I don't really speak Japanese but this is what I got so far:

• なっちゃって apparently means having done something against one's intention
• 駅から is "from the station"
• 歩けなく has ~something~ to do with walking but I couldn't figure out what grammatical case this is.

Maybe it's actually 駅 から 歩け 泣く なっちゃって? "I ended up crying on my way from the station" or something like that. But that would make 歩け imperative which doesn't make sense to me.

Answer 1

Here's where 歩けなく comes from:

1. Start with the verb 歩く, "to walk".
2. Turn it into its potential form: 歩ける, "able to walk".
3. Make it negative: 歩けない, "unable to walk".
4. Turn the newly formed i-adjective into an adverb: 歩けなく.

Now, なっちゃう is a shorter form of なって + しまう.

なって, of course, is the -て form of なる, which means "to become". なる requires that the adjective you are becoming is in an adverbial form, which is why we needed step 4 above.

しまう, as it seems you already know, indicates that the action occurred unintentionally or had a regrettable result.

Putting these together, 「歩けなくなっちゃう」 roughly means "to unfortunately become unable to walk".

「駅から歩けなくなっちゃう」 = "(I) unfortunately won't be able to walk from the station".