Breakdown of По мнению врачей, сон важнее еды.
врач
doctor
еда
food
важный
important
сон
dream (while sleeping) / sleep
Questions & Answers about По мнению врачей, сон важнее еды.
How does the grammar of По мнению work here, and why is it followed by врачей?
The phrase по мнению translates to "in the opinion of" or "according to". It requires the person or group holding the opinion to be in the genitive case. Here, врачей is the genitive plural of врач (doctor).
Since we previously learned words like по-моему, could we use a по- adverb here instead?
No, the hyphenated по- format for opinions is strictly for pronouns (like по-моему or по-вашему). To attribute an opinion to a specific noun, name, or group, you must use по мнению followed by the genitive case.
Why does this sentence use еды instead of чем еда?
After a comparative adjective like важнее (more important), Russian offers two ways to say "than". You can either use чем followed by the nominative case (чем еда), or you can drop чем entirely and just put the thing being compared into the genitive case, which gives us еды. Both are completely natural and interchangeable here.
Is the comma after врачей strictly necessary in Russian?
Yes. In Russian, introductory phrases that indicate the source of a statement or opinion, such as По мнению... (In the opinion of...) or По словам... (According to the words of...), must always be set off by a comma.