ABSTRACT
In English many words expressing quantity are followed by ‘of’: ‘plenty of, a lot of, most of, few of’, etc. In Russian most expressions of quantity are associated with the genitive case. The interrogative сколько (how many, how much) followed by the genitive plural is used to ask about the quantity of countable things:
Сколько студентов было на экскурсии?
‘How many students were on the excursion?’
