Word
В машине мало бензина.
Meaning
There is little gasoline in the car.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about В машине мало бензина.
Why is the word for gasoline written as бензина instead of just бензин?
Because of the word мало (little or not much). In Russian, words indicating quantity like мало, много (a lot), and сколько (how much) require the following noun to be in the Genitive case. Since бензин is a masculine noun ending in a consonant, we add -а to make it бензина. You can think of it as saying 'a little bit of gasoline'.
Does the word мало change if I am talking about a feminine or plural noun?
No, мало always stays exactly the same. It is an adverb of quantity, so it doesn't change endings to match the noun it describes. You only need to change the noun that comes after it into the Genitive case.
Why is the word for car машине here instead of машина?
Because it follows the preposition в (in) to describe a location, which means we must use the Prepositional case. For a feminine noun ending in -а like машина, you drop the -а and add -е to show location: в машине (in the car).
Where is the verb for 'there is' in this sentence?
Russian usually drops the verb 'to be' in the present tense. To say 'there is little gasoline in the car', you just literally say 'In car little gasoline' (В машине мало бензина). The 'there is' is automatically understood from the context.