Questions & Answers about Здесь много носков.
Why does the word for socks end in -ов here?
After words that express quantity like много (a lot / many), Russian requires the noun to be in the Genitive case. Since we are talking about multiple socks, it uses the Genitive plural form: носков.
How do we know to use the -ов ending for this word?
The dictionary form for "sock" is носок. Because it is a masculine noun ending in a consonant, it takes the standard Genitive plural ending -ов.
If the dictionary form is носок, shouldn't adding -ов make it носоков?
It would seem so, but the word носок has a fleeting vowel (the second о). When we add endings to this word, that vowel drops out. The base becomes носк-, and adding -ов gives us носков.
Where is the verb for "are" in this sentence?
Russian almost always leaves out the verb "to be" in the present tense. So instead of literally saying "Here are a lot of socks", the Russian sentence simply says "Here a lot of socks" (Здесь много носков).
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