Learn French: Le lundi, ils mangent beaucoup de carottes et un peu de riz. - On Mondays, they eat a lot of carrots and a little rice.

This is the golden rule for expressions of quantity! After words like beaucoup (a lot) and un peu (a little), you must use a plain de (or d' before a vowel). You drop the usual words for "some" or "the" (les, du, des). So even though carrots are plural, it stays just de.

What does un peu de literally translate to?

It literally means "a little of". In English, we usually just say "a little rice", but in French, you always need the word de ("of") to connect the quantity word to the noun.

Why does the sentence say Le lundi to mean "On Mondays"?

In French, adding le before a day of the week turns it into a routine or habit. Le lundi means "on Mondays" or "every Monday". If you just said lundi without the le, it would usually just mean "Monday" as a one-time event.

Do I pronounce the -ent at the end of mangent?