I’ve understood の at the end of a sentence to be an ‘emotional’ marker. If it is a question it says that the speaker is interested in the subject and wants some kind of explanation or elaboration. If it is a statement then the speaker is indicating that what they are saying is something they are interested in and that they are providing an elaboration or explanation or an invitation to the listener to pay attention to what is being said and an invitation to ask more about the subject. Or at least that was my take away from what my teacher was explaining and from what I’ve read around on it.
I’d recommend reading up on ~んです(か)・~のです(か) Try checking the ‘readings tab’ under this grammar point for several blogs which talk about it and give more examples: ～んです・のです - Japanese Grammar Explained | Bunpro
I understand what you mean. Sometimes my friend who is studying my native langauge asked a similar question and I said I’m not really sure how could I answer this properly. So I go on and on about how this small words could add new meanings to sentences. Then she was like “wow it’s add that much feeling and context to the whole conversation with that little word?”
This is something which often lost in translation from a language to another language. That’s why I decided to study Japanese seriously.
Yeah its quite frustrating and theres always something thats lost.
But for these specific usages of それで and で I think if you have in mind the idea of some sort of continuation while you look at example sentences, you’re setting yourself up for success. The harder part can be distinguishing the different usages of で and それで though, since they have some other uses that aren’t like the ones in this sentence. Thats kinda getting too ahead of ourselves though.
Sorry if someone said this already, I just kinda skimmed the replies. This is called explanatory の particle by some resources though. If you google “explanatory の” you’ll find articles explaining the meaning and how to use it.
My experience is that the explanatory nuance is a lot stronger when it’s used in a question. In a statement, however, it’s usually the feminine sentence-ending particle.
I know you didn’t ask for an explanation, and you’re free to choose what to do with my comment – ignore it by all means – but ‘at least’ does not fit as a translation here at all:
[…] it was good
Good work! You must be tired. At least (?) I was able to get closer to my senpai today.
It’s more like ‘on that note’ or ‘oh yeah, so’. This isn’t even about nitpicking or forcing you (or anyone else) to ‘accept’ a particular translation: で has particular meanings as a particle and as the て-form of だ・である. None of them fit ‘at least’.
I took a quick look in 大辞林, and as far as I can tell, there aren’t any differences if we’re talking about the conversational ‘linking the first topic to the second’ usage. However, それで can have a more literal meaning – ‘because of that’ or ‘for that purpose’ – that uses ‘means particle’ nuance of で. That’s something that で on its own doesn’t have, probably because it’s so short and abrupt and feels more like a way of continuing a conversation or pushing it forward.
Theres some stuff about how it can depend on whos the one saying it and what they’re saying. Namely if you’re the one connecting some expected result because of something the other party said, で is a bit weird to use. Rather than diving into this while I’m supposed to be reading, heres a paper that says that and gives and example and cites another paper with the same conclusion. I think it also has some stuff about それで usages and non-usages.
