Здесь живёт сотня человек.

Because the grammatical subject is сотня, not человек.

• сотня is a singular feminine noun meaning a hundred
• so the verb agrees with сотня and appears in the 3rd person singular: живёт

In other words, Russian is treating the phrase as one quantity/group: a hundred people.

A useful comparison:

• сотня человек живёт = the noun сотня controls the verb
• this is why живёт is the standard form here

After numbers and many quantity expressions, Russian often uses человек as the normal counting word for people.

So you get patterns like:

• пять человек
• двадцать человек
• сотня человек

The regular plural noun is люди, but after a quantity, Russian usually prefers человек.

So:

• люди = people, in general
• человек = the usual form after a number or quantity word

Yes, you can.

Both сотня человек and сотня людей are possible, but they do not feel exactly the same.

• сотня человек sounds like straightforward counting
• сотня людей can sound a bit more lexical or descriptive, with more focus on people as people, not just the number

For a learner, сотня человек is a very useful and very common pattern to remember.

сто is the numeral one hundred.

сотня is a noun meaning a hundred or a group of about a hundred.

So:

• сто человек = one hundred people
• сотня человек = a hundred people

In many contexts they are very close in meaning, but сотня can feel a little more like a unit or grouped quantity. It can also sound a bit more vivid or less dry than сто.

An important grammar point is that сотня is a noun, which is one reason the verb is singular here: сотня живёт.

Not always.

Depending on context, сотня can mean:

• exactly 100
• about 100
• roughly a hundred

If you want to be clearly exact, Russian often uses something like:

• ровно сто человек = exactly one hundred people

So in this sentence, сотня человек may be exact, but it can also just be a round number.

The whole subject phrase is in the nominative, because it is the subject of the sentence.

More specifically:

• сотня is nominative singular
• человек is the form used after quantity expressions in counting phrases

For practical learning, it is best to remember сотня человек as a standard quantity pattern, just like пять человек.

Because здесь expresses location, while сюда expresses motion toward a place.

• здесь = here, in this place
• сюда = to here, to this place

Since жить means to live / reside, it describes being in a place, not moving toward it. So здесь is the correct choice.

No. Russian word order is fairly flexible.

Здесь живёт сотня человек is a natural sentence, with здесь placed first to set the scene: here.

Other orders are also possible, for example:

• Сотня человек живёт здесь — puts more focus on the number
• Здесь сотня человек живёт — possible, but less neutral

So the basic meaning stays the same, but the emphasis changes.

живёт is:

• present tense
• 3rd person singular
• from the imperfective verb жить

Here it means lives / resides.

Because жить is imperfective, it expresses an ongoing state or general fact, not a single completed action. So this sentence describes where people live, not a one-time event.

Yes. In normal Russian writing, ё is often written as е, so you may see:

• живёт
• живет

Both usually represent the same word, but the pronunciation is still живёт, with a yo sound.

A useful point:

• ё is always stressed

So живёт is pronounced with the stress on that syllable.