"You need to wash several cups, five or seven."

Translation: Тебе надо помыть несколько чашек, пять или семь.

[MomoSomero]

Always wondering why it is five or seven, but not six. So random.

[AimingWinehouse]

Why is нужно wrong?

[Jeffrey855877]

It shouldn't be. When they're both adverbs, they're pretty much the same.

[NateBeeson]

It isn't.

[mauquoic]

тебе надо мыть несколько чашек, пять или семь should be correct also, no? Or why do we need perfective here? There is no context...

[schonearbeit]

If it would have been a general rule, like "always wash several cups, five or seven", then imperfective could be right, but here it sounds like an one-time order, so I guess perfective is more on it's place.

[sserpensa]

Is this how they would say ,'about six'. We need clean spoons, about six of them. Or is this more for the sake of practice?

[a22brad22]

I think you can use около + genitive. Yes. The number in the genitive case. They do that. It makes me cry. Около шести (чашек).

[mariodez]

Много not valid?

[Jeffrey855877]

A lot of cups is not the same as several cups

[leod120]

Is "некоторые чашек" wrong because it should be "чашки" in that case? Or does некоторые mean something entirely different?

[Shady_arc]

It should be некоторые чашки—and yes, it has a different meaning. Некоторый is not a number, it is just "some" (i.e. certain objects among the whole group).

[F4yY9kZj]

So, 'Тебе надо помыть некоторые чашки' would mean that from among the cups you had to wash certain ones? If the meaning is that you have to wash a small number, but no particular ones, the word 'несколько' is needed (?).

[Shady_arc]

Yes. If you need to wash некоторые чашки it means that some cups are to be washed but the other cups shouldn't.

[elocym]

The English sentence seems awkward. It's rare for Americans at least to end a sentence with numbers in this manner.

[saxmund]

I'd say "five or six" in English

[NateBeeson]

Who writes these?!

[BiMu476578]

Aren't even numbers considered a bad omen and that's why five and seven?

[Paul440929]

Big if true. However, everything I'm seeing online concerns numbers of flowers only, rather than numbers in general.

[susanashe]

why does несколько have a plural нескольких

[Shady_arc]

It is the Genitive and Prepositional form (also, the Accusative for animates). Несколько does not have the singular/plural distinction, though the case endings are the same as those of soft-stem adjectives in the plural (e.g., синих, синим, синими).