But also I’m not sure what the goal was for the original translation (a bunpro one for ために?) . Their translation seems to convey the same sentiment.
Yes, it’s a BP example for ために. Well… the TL’s good enough, but I’m super anal about these things and like to be as precise as possible. I’d say that their translation has more of a nuance of “I haven’t been back [and that’s it]”, while saying “couldn’t” sounds more like the speaker wanted but couldn’t. While in the first instance, the speaker might or might not care/want to go.
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どう is the question word for こう, そう, ああ. All 4 of them are adverbs.
In Japanese, you’d say そう聞いた, こう言った, ああ考えた etc to mean “heard/said/thought [this/that]”. どう is just the question word that takes their place in a question.
You can read more about it here: http://selftaughtjapanese.com/2014/12/23/japanese-grammar-focus-これ／それ／あれ／どれ-vs-こう／そう／あ
ETA: なに is a (pro)noun that can function as an adjective. It’s the word that translates the closest to the English ‘what’.
ETA 2: the nearly entire list of こーそーあーど words:
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Thanks, fixed!
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Just to say that, AFAIK, apparently double dative (に) with an accusative passive (i.e., where the を-marked object moves to が), as in *そのことが 私に あの人に 言われた, is mostly considered agrammatical. It’s possible only if you drop the “by” dative (“by me”), giving そのことが あの人に 言われた, in which case the meaning will be “that thing was told to him”.
Source/more info
See for example section 3.3.2.1 in Ishizuka’s thesis Toward a Unified Analysis of Passives in Japanese: A Cartographic Minimalist Approach, where the following rule is proposed:
In Japanese passives, whenever the complement of -rare is a (pseudo-)ditransitive verb, the dative phrase in the passive is interpreted as the internal dative argument and not as the external argument.
In layman’s terms, it says that if you put a ditransitive verb (=has direct and indirect objects) into the passive, the result can carry a single dative (に-marked) argument, and that has to be the “natural” argument of the verb when it’s in its active form (i.e., the addressee, in this case).
The way I see it, this alone does not, however, invalidate Nenad’s original interpretation, I think, although I agree with Saida and you that the natural interpretation is to have an indirect passive （私が） あの人に （その）ことを 言われた => あの人に （その）ことを 言われた こと (drop implicit subject; relativise by extruding object こと).
Compare that to Nenad’s interpretation, where it was the subject that was extruded: そのことが あの人に 言われた => （その）ことが あの人に 言われた こと.
As to why the first interpretation is more natural than the second, I’m not quite sure. If I had to guess, I’d say it may be due to how we process sentences. One possible explanation would be that when we encounter the first part あの人に 言われた, we instinctively fill the empty subject with 私 as a default subject in the absence of context, as if it were a standalone sentence （私が） あの人に （それを） 言われた. And then we see こと and backtrack minimally to fix the sentence by assimilating it to the missing object. But that’s just some random hypothesis I just made up (and I know next to nothing about sentence processing), so take that with a grain of salt. 
(Look, @riya, sentence processing! psycholinguistic digression! 
)
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Can someone help with なの, it’s driving me nuts.
I know that 無線がONなの忘れてた means “I forgot the radio was ON”, and I know from Hinative that なの means であること, but what does that mean? Why not just say で or something? It’s not like I don’t understand the sentence, I’m just lost on this grammar. Any help much appreciated!
であること basically means です.
For example, you could say 「無線がONです。」 - “the radio is on”. In this case です is fine, because it’s at the end of the sentence. However the knowledge that radio is on is embedded in larger sentence in your example: “I forgot the radio was on”. The way I understand it, the end of the sentence in Japanese requires a verb and this larger sentence has" forgot": 忘れてた. The information that would end in です gets stuffed into the middle of the sentence and as far as I know, です in that place would be unnatural and gets replaced by なの. Therefore:
無線がONです忘れてた ← No no 
無線がONなの忘れてた ← Yes yes 
This is just a hunch, but I feel this has something to do with を, which 忘れる tends to get. You could say 無線がONなのを忘れてた (because の turns everything before it into a noun) even though you can probably omit it in spoken language at least. But 無線がONですを忘れてた sounds absolutely impossible to me. Someone more knowledgeable can probably comment on this?
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高級肉にくらべると少し味は落ちるが、この肉も十分美味しい。
“When you compare this meat with expensive meat, it is not as good. However, it is still quite delicious.”
High class meat, compared to, little taste falling? What? How do you arrive at this translation?
It actually has everything to do with を 
. In the 無線がONなの(を)忘れた the を is implicit, which is the case in most casual speech. So, you have the verb 忘れた which takes an object marked with を. However, the object must be a noun, so you need to nominalize (this just means “turn into a noun”) the phrase 無線がONだ (the wireless is on). There are 2 ways to nominalize a phrase, either with の, or with こと. の is used in casual speech more often. The way だ is nominalized is by turning it into a な, so it becomes 無線がONなの (the fact that the wireless is on). I hope that makes things clearer.
You could also say 無線がONなことを忘れた and it would still be correct. (?! maybe wrong, I’ll have to get back to this later) Edit: this is not correct, my bad everyone.
You can also replace だ with である (である being a normal verb, it can be nominalized with こと only) and it becomes 無線がONであることを忘れた
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little taste falling → the flavor decreases a little
Also, thank you @jneapan for reassuring me that I was right in a post you don’t know about. 
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I think you’re tripping up on the 味は落ちる. 落ちる can be used in a lot of ways, not just literally “to fall”, but it can express abstract concepts of “to decrease”, or “to go down”, so in this case, the taste (as in, the quality of the taste) goes down, meaning it’s lower. So as a whole, working backwards from the main phrase:
この肉(this meat) は(topic) 十分に(enough) 美味しい(tasty) = this meat is tasty enough ~ “quite delicious”
少し(a little [adverb]) 味(taste) は 落ちる(decreases ~ish) が(however)
高級肉(high class meat) に(object marker) くらべる(compare) と(when)
As a whole, you put it together as “When you compare it to high class meat, the taste is not as good (rephrased a bit to make more sense), however, this meat is tasty enough.” You can rephrase this in any number of ways to make it more natural in English.
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Does this count as one of those collocation things?
“Collocation” as in “words that often go together”? Not sure you’d call it that 
, but 落ちる (and its transitive counterpart 落とす) can be used in a lot of ways (jisho definitions)
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Also, is this really correct? It sounds weird, and according to here:
- When you nominalize nouns, you add な + の or である + こと.
Another way that sounds fine (better to me) is 無線がONのことを忘れてた。(might be wrong)
If it was a な-adjective, then sure なこと, but otherwise, it doesn’t feel right. .-.
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The truth about な adjectives is that they’re actually sort of nouns in disguise. I know it’s counter intuitive but I’m 95% sure it’s grammatically correct.
Edit: Not correct. The 5% strikes again 
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So I’ve heard, but would you be so kind as to provide some source on it being grammatically correct?
I can’t find any. 
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You two mean the way 好き is being used as a noun?
No, wait, that’s using it as a verb, right? What’s an example of na-adjectives being used as a noun?
Something like Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary, it’s “safety”, but also “safe”.
I guess that would be a noun being used as a na-adjective, though?
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I thought those are just words that can function as both? Wasn’t the original claim that all na-adjectives can function as nouns?