Breakdown of Сколько бензина в машине?
машина
car
в
in / to (direction)
сколько
how much / how long / as much / as many as
бензин
gasoline
Questions & Answers about Сколько бензина в машине?
Why does the word бензин change to бензина here?
Because of the word сколько (how much). Words that express quantity, like сколько, много (a lot), and мало (a little), require the noun following them to be in the Genitive case. Since бензин (gasoline) is a masculine noun ending in a consonant, we add -а to the end to make it Genitive.
Does сколько mean 'how much' or 'how many'?
It means both! English uses 'how much' for uncountable things (like gasoline) and 'how many' for countable things (like cars). Russian keeps it simple and uses сколько for all of them, followed by the Genitive case.
Where is the word for 'is' in this sentence?
Russian almost always drops the present tense of the verb 'to be' (is, am, are). A word-for-word translation of this sentence is simply 'How much gasoline in car?'.
Why is it в машине instead of в машина?
This is a quick review of the Prepositional case. When you use the preposition в (in) to talk about a location, the noun must be in the Prepositional case. For feminine nouns ending in -а like машина, the ending changes to -е.