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- "В зоопарке много животных."
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Can anyone explain why животных is used? Is this the genetive? Or accusative? Prepositive? (And why?) Thanks!
животных is genitive plural. This is because много requires genitive. Много животных can be literally translated to English as "a lot of animals." The genitive case supplies the equivalent of the English preposition "of."
1766
It took me a while to figure this out, because the plural noun endings for genitive neuter nouns are: - [no ending], ей, ий & ён. .
As it turns out, животное "animal"/животных "animals" are adjective-nouns, and the endings -oe & -ых are adjective endings, with the singular in genitive neuter case and the plural used for all genitive genders.
DL marks wrong "At the zoo are a lot of animals" because it wants to see "there are" and not just "are." I've seen this requirement for "there" many times here and I don't understand it. It seems to me adding "there" adds a little bit of emphasis in English, which would be equivalent to adding "есть" to the Russian, i.e., "Есть много животних." Am I wrong??
I'd say 'At the zoo are a lot of animals' sounds extremely stilted. 'There is/are' is a very neutral way of expressing existence in English, because 'to be' is a very weak verb. In Russian on the other hand, existence is normally implicit in sentences, with есть being used only for statements indicating existence by itself (not in/on a place, with someone/sth etc.)
Does it sound stilted? You mean stilted as in too formal?
I leave out the 'there' automatically and am constantly punished for doing so, rather annoying. I assumed it was because it sounded too informal rather than formal.
No it doesn't sound formal, it just sounds wrong. I mean technically it isn't, but that phrasing would not be used in any context really.
There's lots of animals at the zoo
This is how I, an American, translated and believe you wanted to say something like this.
However duolingo does not in fact accept this translation lol
- 439
There's lots if animals is not grammatically correct. We say it a lot, we are not correct. There's means there is. But adding lots of animals, plural, you should say There ARE a lot of animals. That is probably why it wasnt accepted.
I was also wondering why "there" is so important. I think it's because of the declination, even there is no difference in English. After translating it to German with and without "there" i recognized that it is nominativ without there an accusative with there. I am a beginner but it seems to me that it is accusative in Russian too. So this might be the reason why "there" is used. Is there an russian expert who can clarify this?
It's actually genitive plural here, but that's a quirk of много. If it were about just one animal, it would be nominative.
- 1766
Because objects of the preposition в = "in/at for static location" are cast in prepositional case, and -e is the prepositional case ending for the masculine noun зоопарк.
I think "there are a lot of animals in the park" should also be accepted - in English it corresponds fully to "there are many animals in the park"
It's a bit formal for normal English-speaking but given that this is the transliteration it should be accepted, I would think.
- 439
It just sounds strange. No one says it like that even though its grammatically correct.
In the zoo there are many animals is accepted. This more closely follows the original word order, but it's important to understand the function of the 'there.'
It places emphasis on the animals, rather than the zoo; whereas in Russian they must more strongly rely on the word order to do so.
- 825
Много is another one of those words that forces the genitive case. Just think of it as meaning "a lot of".
This sentence is emphasizing "many animals" because it's at the end of the sentence. And DL really wants us to use "There are ...." to convey this emphasis. I too struggled with this for a long time, but after seeing all their examples, plus tutorials on word order and ways of emphasizing subjects and objects, I've finally conceded that "There are ....." constructions in English often really do correspond best to the Russian we are given to translate.
There is a lot(many) of animals/ that could use lot but it does not have lot
How would you say: "there is one animal in the zoo"? And, why animal is an adjective in Russian? I didn't grasp why yet
- 1766
Some nouns are taken from adjectives. It's just the way they do things in Russian. A recent example is Рабочий = "worker/laborer"
- 1463
Plural genitive. See declension table here. Of course none of that would make sense to me (why genitive?!) if servolock would not have told us that много requires genitive - see that post above and give a lingot or an upvote to him! :) My brain would have struggled over this a long time without his help.
If you think of много as "a lot of..." it makes sense to use the genitive case, much the same way as in "I don't have any (of)...". This is helpful to me at least.
- 1463
Indeed! This is quite helpful. So I must come up with a new mnemonic for remembering много's meaning - I have taken the "мн" of много to remind myself of "many," and "many animals" doesn't point my brain toward using the genitive.
- 1766
It took me a while to figure this out, because the plural noun endings for genitive neuter nouns are: - [no ending], ей, ий & ён. .
As it turns out, животное "animal"/животных "animals" are adjective-nouns, and the endings -oe & -ых are adjective endings, with the singular in genitive neuter case and the plural used for all genitive genders.
- 478
It's really inconsistent when sometimes the answers with 'The' count, and sometimes they don't.
"A lot of" is accepted. Make sure that your answer used the plural "are a lot of" and not the singular, "is a lot of animals".
Learning your third language while using your second language is so confusing. I have already reported my rejected answer "there IS a lot of animals in the zoo" before realising that I had yet another brain fart.
