15
無理だったんだ is straightforward, it's a combination of 無理だった ("was impossible") and the explanatory-の. "So it is that it was impossible", "Because it was not possible", "(I failed but) it was impossible (in the first place)", etc.
無理なんだった is usually interpreted as a combination of 無理なんだ ("it's that it's impossible"; present tense) and discovery-た. "(Ah, I've ...
8
One usage that I was taught and is not mentioned above for んです is to soften a question or statement.
For example
レストランに 行きたいです I want to go to a restaurant.
is a bit demanding or matter-of-fact. Changing to 行きたいんです softens this. Imagine a friend asks you about what you both should do for lunch. 行きたい sounds a bit forceful, like you will consider nothing ...
6
As for the difference between んだぜ/んだぞ and のだぜ/のだぞ, yes, the former is far more common, but the latter form is still grammatical and occasionally heard. A fictional pompous person may well talk like ～のだぜ/のだぞ with their close friends.
んぜ/んぞ/のぜ/のぞ do not exist.
見たんだぜ。見たんだぞ。: OK, informal male speech
見たのだぜ。見たのだぞ。: Less common. pompous and/or old-...
6
というの asks rhetorical questions (it's literally just と, 言う, and の). If your mom told you to keep studying for a long time you might say something like 死ぬまで勉強しろというのか "you want me to study until I die, is that it?!" Or, more literally "are you telling (言う) me to study until I die?!" As you can see it's a bit difficult to line up the tenses between the two ...
6
Ignore my suggestion in the comments! Actually I think the way you should interpret this is "what difference does it make if he's riding the train?" Grammatically some key points are:
乗ってたら is a contraction is 乗っていたら, which is a condition of 乗っている ("is riding")
なんだっていうんだ is kind of a set expression for "what difference does it make?" それがどうした is another ...
6
なん does not mean "not". This (な)ん is something called "explanatory-の". You can learn about it in the following articles.
What is the meaning of ～んです/～のだ/etc?
Explanatory のだ （んだ）
より is a particle to mark a comparison target. So the sentence is the same as 僕は誰より彼女が好きだ but with an added nuance. Perhaps the person is trying to convince someone. The translation ...
5
彼はこういうのがうまいのです。
Sounds like you're confused about both の. Let's analyze.
Breaking it down
First, a literal word-by-word translation.
[彼]{"He" }[は]{[TOPIC] }[こう]{"like this" }[いう]{"to say": verb }[の]{[NOM] }[が]{[SUBJECT] }[うまい]{"good; skillful; tasty": adjective }[の]{[NOM] }[です]{"to be": verb}。
いう ...
4
There's a lot to unpack here. The attempted translation you proffered doesn't come all that close, so I've broken it down as shown below:
その手間が面倒な人
People (who find) that 'labor/time & effort' bothersome
が [subject marker]
ペットボトルのお茶を買う
buy PET bottles of tea
のであり、
explanatory/emphasizing の + continuous form of である（です）
そう考えると、
Thinking this way,
...
4
The former, なんで日本語を話せますか, is plain unnatural, and you should always construct a sentence like the latter. A good rule of thumb is that なんで/どうして is almost always used with explanatory の/ん.
Exceptions:
Short questions like "なぜか?", "なんでですか?" and "どうして?" do not require の/ん. (Although it's common to add な/の like "なぜなのか?", "なんでなんですか?", "どうしてなの?" The difference ...
3
When のだ is used to provide an explanation, how does it differ from (だ)から?
Giving a reason is only one of the ways to explain something. Explanatory-のだ is used in broader situations to mark an important part of your conversation. When it does provide a reason for the previous sentence, it's semantically interchangeable with から. The difference is から is more ...
2
This の is "explanatory-no". I hope you already know this の because it appears in many formal sentences. Semantically the sentence is the same as 名前を呼んでいるのだ/です.
This よ after の is a feminine sentence-end particle (Note that explanatory-の is a kind of noun). It adds a small emphasis (like English "you know", "yeah", etc). The second よ after 気付いて is also a ...
2
If you don’t know whether or not whatever uttered the voice did so in response to the sound, you might say:
その音に反応したのかどうかわからない。
If you suspect it did, you might say:
その音に反応したのかもしれない。
のか in your sentence should be understood along these lines.
In fact, he could have as well said:
その音に反応したのかもしれない。わたしの耳に一つの声が届いた。
or
その音に反応したのかもしれないが、わたしの耳に一つの声が届いた。
You ...
2
In this sentence, のか means that the speaker is guessing at a cause. To translate the sentence, "Perhaps reacting to the sound, I heard a voice." Kind of a gross translation, but essentially the speaker is guessing that the voice they hear is from someone vocalizing in reaction to the referenced sound.
2
You are right, the first sentence looks fairly unnatural to me if this is everything in the conversation. You have to say ケーキがなくなってしまいました or something if this is the first sentence in a conversation.
However, this may be valid if there is enough context before this, for example:
A: 昨日買ったケーキを持ってきてくれ。
B: 申し訳ありません、ケーキはもうないのです。犬がぜんぶ食べたのです。
Now ケーキはもうない works ...
2
Your translation is actually good overall. You can split this long sentence into two and interpret them individually.
本式のメリーゴーランドの馬のように大きくはないけれど、それにしたって持って来る時は国雄さんとお父さんと二人がかりだったっていうんですもの、
It's not as large as a genuine merry-go-round horse, but still, I heard it took two people (Kunio and dad) when they brought it there!
っていう (=という) describes hearsay ("...
1
"なの" can be used as either a question marker or an explanatory marker depending on intonation. Think of reading it as "嫌いなの？" versus "嫌いなの". In this case, the context tells you that it means the latter.
If you want to learn more about なの, check out this answer and keep in mind that 嫌い is, sneakily, a な-adjective so the な must ...
1
～してんなぁ is a contraction of ～してるなぁ (which in itself is a contraction of ～しているなぁ, as you probably know). る sometimes becomes ん before certain consonants.
1
んだ is a spoken form of のだ. There is actually an exact entry for のだ in the Japanese dictionary that comes with MacOS/iOS (スーパー大辞林 / Super Daijirin Japanese Dictionary); I think the explanations make quite some sense:
の◦だ
（連語）〔準体助詞「の」に断定の助動詞「だ」の付いたもの。話し言葉では「んだ」「のです」となることも多い〕
① 原因・理由・根拠などの説明を強く述べる。「こうして独り住まいをしていると，ますます孤立感が深まっていく―◦だ」「弟の言うことを聞けば聞くほど，気の毒でしかたがなかった―◦...
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