Questions & Answers about Здесь слишком много людей.
How does the word много relate to our current lesson on comparatives?
The word много means 'much' or 'many', and it is the base form of the irregular comparative больше (more). If you wanted to change this sentence to say 'There are MORE people here', you would drop слишком and replace много with больше: Здесь больше людей.
Why is the word for people written as людей instead of люди?
In Russian, words that express quantity, like много (many), мало (few), or сколько (how many), force the following noun into the genitive case. Since there are many people, we use the genitive plural form: людей.
Wait, I learned that we use человек for 'people' when counting. Why use людей here?
That is a tricky exception! You are right that with exact numbers 5 and above, we use the genitive plural of человек (for example, пять человек). However, after non-specific quantity words like много (many) or мало (few), we must use людей, which comes from the irregular plural word люди (people).
Where is the verb 'are' in this sentence?
Russian typically drops the verb 'to be' in the present tense. While English says 'There ARE too many people', the Russian sentence simply puts the pieces together like 'Here too many of people' (Здесь слишком много людей).
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