"Я ем много хлеба."
Translation:I eat a lot of bread.
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Ive been listening to some Russian music via spotify and i heard "хлеба" This was a rap song and im curious if he could have possibly been using the same slang we use in america? like "I have a lot of bread homie" im just curious to know if that can be used as slang for money in Russia or?..
No. We use the word "cabbage" instead :D
Apparently some words in russian with "г" sound like a v like in "его" but in some words like "благодарю" и "готовит" it sounds like a g. Idk why. I hope someone knows why
Г is usually pronounced as "G". It is pronounced as "V" only in special cases, in -EGO and -OGO endings of genitive and accusative of masculine and neuter words (e.g. большо́го, краси́вого), and , pronouns (e.g. его, моего, чего).
Note that in other cases, when there is a "его" or "ого" group of letters, you would read Г "normally" as G (e.g. строго, Гоголь).
Here are some explanations of why that my be the case: https://www.quora.com/Why-and-when-is-the-letter-%D0%B3-g-in-Russian-pronounced-as-v-i-e-as-in-the-word-e%D0%B3o#:~:text=Whenever%20you%20encounter%20the%20Russian,That's%20it.
Here "хлеба" is the Genitive case of "хлеб", correct? I presume bread in this sense is being classed as a "mass noun" then? So the direct translation would be: "I eat a lot of some bread"? I'm just a little confused why bread is not in the Accusative here and the mass noun reason is the only one I can think of. Apologies if I'm being daft!
Since in this phrase "мно́го" is a numeral, it takes the noun in the genitive case.
BTW, if a noun is not a "mass noun", use the genitive plural:
I eat a lot of nails: Я ем много гвоздей :)
It makes me think of French. This phrase for example would be "Je mange beaucoup de pain". "Beaucoup" as a quantity of something specific will most always be followed by "de", which is kinda the French genitive case.
The interesting thing about this case is that много usually requires the genitive plural but because хлеб can't really be plural, like it would be in english even if you talk about a quantity of bread it has to be genitive singular (or you would talk about different kinds of bread)
мно́го • (mnógo)
IPA: [ˈmnoɡə]
"much; many; a lot"
(comparative (по)бо́льше or (по)бо́лее) (+ genitive case)
From Proto-Slavic *mъnogъ, from Proto-Balto-Slavic *managas, from Proto-Indo-European *monogʰos. Probably related to English many, German manch ("many a; many; some") and Norwegian mange ("many").
Source: Wiktionary.
