"Я не хочу хлеб."

Translation: I do not want bread.

[wush11]

Хочу - bless you!

[DorianWebs]

I know right, haha

[RRL210]

Lol my family has been making that joke for ages!!

[tylerblankenship]

Doesn't хотеть usually need the genitive after it? Or is that something to do with countable/uncountable nouns?

[deactivated user]

You can use genitive with uncountable nouns to convey a partitive meaning:

• Я хочу́ хлеб. 'I want [the] bread.'
• Я хочу́ хле́ба. 'I want some bread.'

The meaning difference is pretty subtle, they are often interchangeable.

[Theron126]

Does "я не хочу хлеба" work as well as "я не хочу хлеб"?

[deactivated user]

Yes, both sound OK.

[Theron126]

That's what I thought. Good to have it confirmed :-)

[johnny_MMX]

Genitive in your examples is the latter. The former is accusative.

[deactivated user]

Yes, I contrast genitive to accusative to show the difference in meaning.

[Dore.m]

Why Я не хочу... and Я не вижу... but У меня нет...?
Does не mean "do not" in those cases, whereras нет mean "not"?

[deactivated user]

Russian expresses ‘having’ differently from English. In Russian, we don’t say ‘I have’ or ‘I don’t have’. We say, «у меня есть» ‘at my [possession], there_is’ or «у меня нет» ‘at my [possession], there_is_no’.

So, this construction is similar to other sentences about the existence:

• У меня́ нет воды́. ‘I don‘t have water.’ (=‘at my [possession], there-is-no water)
• В буты́лке нет воды. ‘There is no water in the bottle.’ (=‘in the bottle, there-is-no water’)
• У ма́мы есть маши́на. ‘Mum has a car’ (=‘at mum’s [possession] there-is car’)
• В гараже́ е́сть маши́на. ‘There is a car in the garage.’

In ‘there is’ sentences, you use «есть» ‘there is/are’ in positive sentences and «нет» ‘there is/are no’ in negative sentences.

But «ви́жу» and «хочу́» are normal verbs, and they use the usual negation — «не»:

• Я не ви́жу маши́ны. ‘I don’t see [a/the] car’
• Я не хочу́ зна́ть. ‘I don’t want to know’

[IsacMontei]

Thanks a lot!! Helped so much!

[Ste941]

why is bread in nominative?

[Bistra191770]

It's accusative, but I prefer genitive - Я не хочу хлеба.

[sppottsam]

I though negative accusative takes genitive? So the noun should be in the genitive?

[Mortyko]

My question too.

[SailMaitevo]

No, inanimated: acc=nom, animated: acc=gen

[eannaoc]

I notice you are/were also learning Polish which is probably where you're getting that from (I thought the same). It doesn't seem to work the same way in Russian with accusative becoming genitive in the negative, but from what I gather so far in this course and from previous comments is that this sentence could have the genetive хлеба which would imply that it's "some bread."
Although correct me if I'm wrong, this is just what I'm understanding so far

[FernanndaBP]

I put: I don't want a bread" they didn't accept it

[agathisdamara]

Ini mah gampang

[AnthonyLeu8]

would it be right to say "Я не хочу хлеба."

[SailMaitevo]

No, хлеб is ilan inanimate noun (unless you know a living bread), so the accusative form is equal to the nominative, nit to genitive.
Мальчик -> мальчика
Отец -> отца
Хлеб -> хлеб
День -> день