More on Explanations - Conjugated Forms

This is a more difficult lesson for me because it contains a lot of condensed info. It goes over using the の particle with conjugated nouns and adjectives, as well as conjugating the particle itself to mean different things. I'm going to write an explanation for myself as best I can.

For nouns and adjectives, I can conjugate them to negative or past form and just add の onto the end to achieve the same effect as before. 歌手 means singer, so I'll use that in my examples.

歌手なの？
You're a singer?

歌手じゃないの？
You're not a singer?

歌手だったの？
You were a singer?

歌手じゃなかったの？
You weren't a singer?

If I want to make them declarative (aka, non-questions) with だ or です, the の will be shortened to ん just like before. These examples are intended to carry an explanatory tone. When I say "I'm a singer" it's not a mere statement of fact - it's explaining that I am one due to someone's potential expectation that I wasn't.

歌手なんだよ。
I'm a singer, you know.

歌手じゃないんだ。
I'm not a singer.

歌手だったんだ。
I was a singer.

歌手じゃなかったんだ。
I wasn't a singer.

I can also conjugate の like a noun to add a new type of "confirmation-seeking" to sentences. I'll do the past and negative past tense forms for completeness' sake, but they don't make much sense here.

歌手なの？
You're a singer?

歌手なんじゃない？
You're a singer, aren't you?

歌手なんだった？
You're a singer, were you?

歌手なんじゃなかった？
You're a singer, weren't you?

Basically, conjugating the の here (which becomes ん, as usual) adds the "aren't you" portion onto the end. You think that person is a singer, but you want to confirm.

It gets more complex because conjugation can occur on both sides. For example:

歌手じゃなかったんだった？
You weren't a singer, were you?

This is possible with the various combinations of conjugations, though not all of them make sense together. (You aren't a singer, weren't you? - that's nonsensical)

That's about it for now, and this is officially the last lesson before I move on to verbs. I'm sure I'll be doing a lot of practice for this one though, because it's a bit mind-bending at first.

Credit goes to Tae Kim's lesson seen here.