Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingKnight
と, besides meaning "and", is a particle that indicates that the preceding statement is a quote of some sort. In this case, imagine "onehp" between quotation marks and perhaps you'll get the gist of it. Then again, "quoted" statements are very, very common in Japanese, and are not used like in most (if not all) Western languages.
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More to the point, it's a quotative particle that marks the preceding phrase as subordinate to what follows. It can be quoted speech (thus functioning as "quotation marks" as above), or be used as "
that" in the context of a conjunctive particle, e.g. 田中さんはいい人だ
と思う, "I think
that Tanaka is a good person". (Unfortunately for Japanese speakers learning English, the word "that" is frequently dropped in this context, and the subordinate clause is thus implied only by context.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by onehp
このおてら、ゆうめいなの <- what is the の for? I frequently see it in some informal sentences
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It's part of the explanatory predicate, which takes the (uninflected) form of "[na] no da" ("na" is only used when the final word of the main clause is a noun or -na adjective). In the case you cite above, the speaker is female, and drops "da" altogether, leaving "no" at the end. The common contraction for men in the informal form is "n'da," though the "no" is often contracted to "n" in more polite speech as well, except in the most formal circumstances. And here in Osaka Prefecture, it's said as "nen".
As for the meaning itself, it's highly dependent on context, but usually the person is giving information to supplement a previous assertion, or making a statement that explains an apparent situation. (In this case, however, the person is wrong and is informed of such by the others. It's still hard for me, as a non-native speaker, to pinpoint the exact reason, but in phrasing her initial statement the way she did, she's probably either indicating that it's "what the guidebook says," or explaining over the others' disappointment why she wanted to see the temple which is quite deserted.)