Breakdown of На улице много бегунов и туристов.
и
and
улица
street
много
a lot
на
on, at / by (transport) / to (a place) / to (in answer to)
турист
tourist
бегун
runner
Questions & Answers about На улице много бегунов и туристов.
Why is it на улице instead of в улице?
In Russian, you use the preposition на (on) with улица (street) to mean "on the street" or "outside," rather than в (in). Here, it takes the Prepositional case ending -е because it answers the question "Where?".
Where is the verb "are" in this sentence?
Russian skips the verb "to be" in the present tense. Literally, this sentence is structured as "On the street [there is] a lot of runners and tourists." If you wanted to say there were many runners, you would need a past tense verb: На улице было много бегунов.
Why do the words for runners (бегунов) and tourists (туристов) end in -ов?
They are in the Genitive plural case. The word много (many / a lot of) requires the nouns that follow it to be in the Genitive case, because it acts like a quantity. Because бегун and турист are masculine nouns ending in a hard consonant, they take the regular -ов ending in the plural.
Is the word бегунов related to verbs of motion?
Yes! The base noun бегун (runner) comes directly from the verbs of motion бегать and бежать (to run). The suffix -ун is used here to turn the verb's root into a noun for a person who does that action.
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