Breakdown of Сколько участников здесь сегодня?
здесь
here
сколько
how much / how long / as much / as many as
сегодня
today
участник
participant
Questions & Answers about Сколько участников здесь сегодня?
Why does участников end in -ов here?
After words that express quantity like сколько (how many), Russian requires the genitive case. Because we are asking about multiple people, we use the genitive plural. The base word is участник (a masculine noun ending in a consonant), and the regular genitive plural ending for these nouns is -ов.
If I wanted to answer this question with 'five participants', how would I say it?
You would say пять участников. Numbers 5 and above also require the genitive plural, exactly like сколько. However, if the answer is 'one participant', the rules change to nominative singular: один участник.
Why is there no word for 'are' in this sentence?
In Russian, the present tense of the verb 'to be' (am, is, are) is almost always skipped. So, the literal translation of this sentence is simply 'How many participants here today?'.
A quick reminder: how is the г in сегодня pronounced?
It is pronounced like an English 'v' (se-VOD-nya). This is a very common spelling exception in Russian. The word сегодня actually comes from combining the old words сего (of this) and дня (day), and genitive endings with -его or -ого always take a 'v' sound.