Questions & Answers about У девушек много яблок.
Why is the word for apples just яблок?
After words of quantity like много (a lot), we use the genitive plural. For neuter nouns ending in -о like яблоко, the genitive plural is formed by dropping the final -о. This leaves us with a zero ending: яблок.
Where does the е in девушек come from? The dictionary form is девушка.
The preposition у requires the genitive case, and here we need the genitive plural for multiple young women. Feminine nouns ending in -а also drop their final vowel to form the genitive plural. However, dropping the -а from девушка leaves the awkward consonant cluster девушк. To make it easier to pronounce, Russian inserts a fleeting vowel е, resulting in девушек.
Why is there no есть in this sentence?
When expressing possession in Russian, we usually omit есть if the focus of the sentence is on the quantity or description of the object, rather than the mere fact that the person has it. Because we are emphasizing that the young women have a lot of apples (много), the word есть is dropped.
Does много always require the genitive plural?
For countable objects like apples, yes. Words denoting quantity like много (many/much) or мало (few/little) are followed by the genitive plural for anything you can count. If you were talking about something uncountable, like water or time, you would use the genitive singular instead.