I liked the in-passing note about how written instructions in school shift as you go up through the age ranges:
You’ll typically see instructions like 計算しましょう in elementary school and 計算しなさい in middle school. From high school onward, 計算しろ and 計算せよ appear commonly.
The shift from しなさい to the bare imperative is ominous…
Been reading manga that’s freely available on Bookwalker as practice and apart from the plot hitting maybe a bit too close to home (for context, it’s about a girl who struggles to fit in at school and so ends up eagerly agreeing to whatever her “best friend” decides for her just to not feel left out), I’ve been struggling with this sentence and want to make sure I understood it correctly and not just half got it by context:
嫌われたくなくて何だって好きじゃなくても合わせてきたのに
嫌われたくなくて= “Not wanting to be disliked/hated”
何だって好き= “Like anything/anyone”
じゃなくても= this I’m completely stumped. It’s connected to “好き” so “even if I don’t like it”?? It’s negating 好き
合わせてきたのに= “in order to fit in”
My biggest problem at the moment is that I sometimes kinda “half get” what the sentence says (or what I THINK it says…) but any time I see long strings of conjugations my brain just shuts down and can’t connect them all together. I’ve been drilling grammar and all the various verb forms in particular since that’s by far my weakest point but sometimes I start to see what looks like an infinite concatenation of なくて and じゃなくand my brain just gives up lol
So the sentence I *think* is something like “In order to fit in not wanting to be disliked, I liked anything/anyone even if I didn’t” but… I can’t “see” how it actually maps like that in all parts. (I can give the link to the manga if it’s needed for context, it’s page 41 of the first volume of the following manga on Bookwalker, free until 8/31:
なないろ革命（りぼんマスコットコミックスDIGITAL）(マンガ（漫画）)の電子書籍無料試し読みならBOOK☆WALKER)
You most certainly have the gist of the sentence already. 
I would break up the sentence a little bit differently than you did, and maybe that will help.
You already worked out what this means, and it’s in テ形 to connect to the rest of the sentence
“anything,” in テ形 to connect to the rest of the sentence
Things she doesn’t like, with 「ても」meaning “even though” in this context.
合わせる meaning to match or to join in this case, with くる because she goes and does those things.
So I’d translate it something along the lines of “In order not to be disliked, I went along with anything, even though I didn’t like it.”
I still have plenty of flaws in my grammar, so I’d love to learn from other people if I misinterpreted anything or got any nuances wrong.
My brain very much did that, too. It would be, and can be, hard to keep track of what’s going on with long sentences. But exposure really helps, and at some point you can do less mental translating and just trust that you understand what’s being said.
Your interpretation is solid
On the specifics, there’s two nitpicky things I’d make sure we are clear on
Maybe not “things”. The everything is the 何だって part before this and this section is “even if I don’t/didn’t like it”
Even though I don’t like it would be 好きじゃないのに or something
Maybe thinking this is like 行ってくる’s くる here it seems, but this is actually not the case. This てきた refers to the time dimension and coming up to this point in time. Essentially “up until today”. It tells us that she has 合わせるd until today (though not necessarily that she plans on stopping)
Thanks! My broad grammar is okay nowadays on straightforward stuff, but there is the nitty-gritty that definitely needs more work. Stuff like this really helps.
Hi! I’ve been using Langcorrect lately to write a bit more. I got a correction today that used か in a way I don’t think I know.
今日は何を書**くを自信なしいたらいいかわからない**
You can see what got crossed out is what I awkwardly wrote. I think I understand the sentence fine but what is that か doing after the いい?
It marks 今日は何を書いたらいい as an embedded question, basically - I don’t know “what should I write today?”. Or in smoother English, I don’t know what I should write today.
It’s not really equivalent to what you’d originally written (though what you’d originally written does have something missing after the 書くthat needs to be there, though whether it’s もの or just の depends on what your intent was).
My intent was pretty much that. “I’m unsure what to write today”.
I read the fix as basically “Today, what to write good, don’t know” or “Today, I don’t know what is good to write”. I guessed the か was making it some kind of embedded question but didn’t understand for sure. Thank you for confirming and explaining.
I see now what you mean about needing something after writing to nominalize it. Thank you for that too!
自信 is more about being self confident or not, rather than just whether you know or not. If you say you don’t have 自信 in picking a topic it’s like you’re expressing doubt in your ability to pick a subject people will want to read. わからない is a lot more natural for “nothing springs to mind for a subject today”.
自信なし is also more like a written form noun phrase; it doesn’t work in a sentence the way you have it here – you would want something like …自信がない . (The JMDICT entry is one of those “hasn’t been updated since forever” ones that can sometimes be a bit misleadingly phrased. I’m slightly surprised it gets an entry of its own at all.)
Thank you for the explanation. I will try to keep that in mind! 
I’m not sure whether it’s the sentence structure or the くださる throwing me off in this sentence. At least I find the sentence structure interesting. From the end of 本好きの下剋上 番外編２ (aka H5Y #2):
「ハンネローレ様がお手紙をくださったのはわたくしですし、[…]」
Context: The わたくし in the sentence received a letter from ハンネローレ.
Breakdown:
ハンネローレ様が = subject/“doer” of the sentence clause
お手紙を = object
くださった = to give/gave (from someone higher up downwards). Is my interpretation right? (Maybe this is what’s puzzling me)
のは = nounifyer nominalizer + sentence topic particle
わたくし = The receiver of the action. Right?
どうでしょう、皆さん。あってますか、この解釈。
I love how the context is literally just what the sentence says lol
Yes. Your 解釈 is correct. Perhaps what is tripping you up is the のは and the idea that it could go both ways depending on the situation.
呼んだのは田中さん
This can mean that Tanaka san is the one who called. OR it can mean that the omitted subject called tanakasan. “The one who I called is tanakasan”. If its still hard to imagine this, try reading the sentence.
Leeboくん、お前なんで来たの？！俺が呼んだのはお前じゃなくて、Redglareさんだ！
The first usage is what you would expect for a sentence like
手紙をあげたのは私
Which is maybe what your brain is defaulting to. But the ハンネローレ様が (and くださった) give us the information need to realize its the second interpretation. “The one who hannnerore gave the letter to was me”.
EDIT: perhaps lending to this misinterpretation of のは is how you are thinking about the の as well. This isn’t the no like 走るのが好き・走ることが好き. This is the の like 白いのがほしい when you’re shopping for some…arbitrary item that can come in white or something.
Hey, I couldn’t be sure the meaning would be super obvious! 
Yeah, I think it’s this. As you say, the ハンネローレ様が + くださった should be clues enough. I didn’t realize this at first.
I actually interpreted this as the latter one at first, haha. I guess the questions 誰が呼んだ？ vs 誰を呼んだ？ makes it clear which situation it is.
ん？ I didn’t expect this. Hmm, how does this math? I understand 白いのがほしい. But I don’t understand how that usage translates to the sentence in question. 
?
「ハンネローレ様がお手紙をくださったのはわたくしですし、[…]」
It translates to the sentence in question because that’s the usage of の that applies to the sentence at hand.
勉強するのは楽しい
This is the same as
勉強することは楽しい and is NOT the の in your sentence
勉強するのは私
This is NOT the same as
勉強することは私 and is a different usage of の. This is the の used in your sentence
If you look it up in a dictionary you will see something like
>(の)ものの意。また、ことの意
The first example is the こと, second would be もの
Aha, I see what you mean now. This I need to digest. ムズイわ TuT
Thanks for the help!
Update: I proposed this for deletion on the basis that no other dictionary thinks it’s an expression and the definition is rather off-beam; the JMDICT maintainers agreed and have removed it.
If you have the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, it separates these two into “no 2” (“a dependent indefinite pronoun”) and “no 3” (“a nominalizer which is used when the nominalized sentence expresses a directly perceptible event”), and includes an example sentence which is ambiguous between which it is and where the meaning differs depending how you interpret it:
高田さんが使っていたのをおぼえていますか。
Aha, it’s clearer to me what the difference is now.
If I understand correctly based on what Vanilla said:
Edit: This sentence is still somewhat puzzling, I feel like neither もの or こと would fit.
「ハンネローレ様がお手紙をくださったのはわたくしですし、[…]」
Maybe because it’s marked with は instead of を. I take it back.
Edit2: I tried reading more about the different ones and I have a feeling that just replacing の with こと/もの to figure out which one it is too simplistic. It doesn’t always work. Because the one in my sentence is neither…? Is what my intuition is telling me.
When the indefinite pronoun is referring to a person rather than an object, もの probably doesn’t feel intuitively right to you (though you can use もの to refer to people in at least some situations). You can also see it’s the pronoun in this sentence because replacing の with 人 works.
As a rule I’m not sure how useful the もの/こと substitution is, because it requires you to already have a solid grasp of もの and こと, which are themselves quite complicated. I think my approach is more like “know that の can do both of these jobs; in any particular sentence usually only one makes sense”. In your sentence it can’t be the nominalizer because “the receiving of a letter was me” makes no sense.