"They sell a lot of spices and oils."
Translation:Ili vendas multe da spicoj kaj oleoj.
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Its similar to the difference between 'Mi trinkas tason de akvo' and 'mi drinkas malvarman akvon'. In the latter cases the objects of the verbs are 'a lot' and 'a cup' respectively, and what its a lot of or what its a cup of is seperated from the object enough (by a preposition) that its not in the accusative. Its a difficult and counter-intuitive distinction becauae to your ears 'a glass of water' or 'a lot of spices' sounds like one object.
In the former cases 'multajn' and 'malvarman' are adjectives that still form part of the object noun, so both will be in the accusative.
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Because you don't use the accusative after a preposition (except sometimes to indicate direction, which isn't the case here). You would say "Ili vendas spicojn kaj oleojn", but the -n isn't used after "da".
355
Nouns in this example are "spices" and "oils", I don't see how you can use "a lot of" (multe) as a noun?!
One of my frustrations lately with the Duolingo forum for Esperanto is that I see more and more questions which could be answered if the person asking had read the Tips and Notes or had done lesson 1 of a course like the one at Free-Esperanto-Course dot Net.
They say there are no dumb questions - and I believe that - but some questions seem very much like asking the teacher to do the assigned reading for the student. It's best to think of Duolingo not as a language course, but as a language game. Get a basic textbook or take a free basic course along with it.
At the very least, read the Tips and Notes.