Singular or plural "Mucho Americano"
In listening to one of the videos on LoMasTv, I came across the expression "Mucho Americano viene aquí." this is translated as, " Lots of Americans come here." I am puzzled by the singular in Spanish "Mucho Americano" and not "Muchos Americanos vienen aquí?" I would appreicate any help in this translation.
Jim
11 Answers
Well, no, all the above answers are not correct. In this case we drop the s intentionally, it is used like in a plural sense but not the plural itself.
Aquí hay mucho americano.
Aquí hay mucho idiota.
Aquí hay mucha imbecil.
We change the gender of mucho to mucha if we only refer to women.
For example this written by a woman (don't look at the mistakes mind you
):
Creo que lo mismo que a mi hay mucha idiota que se ha dejado llevar por la religión, el que diran, la carrera, las oposiciones, ...
My two cents:
Case 1: This is often used to designate a group of people by national and/or regional characterization. It's self-evident it is being talked about people, " gente", thus the word isn't really used or needed but the "quantity declination" (I am not really sure how to say this in English) is kept as if the word were there. It is kept in the "male gender declination" for the singular generic word to designate nationality is, I'm afraid, masculine: el alemán, el boliviano, el americano etc. That is why:
"Aquí hay mucho alemán." o "Por acá pasa mucho americano." etc.
Case 2: There is now, another meaning for this type of phrase which refers to an amplification, boost, augmentation or whatever you may call it, of the word that comes after mucho. This use of the word is not technically correct and is used, as I can see, only in some regions as an idiom (I use it). The gender declination is designated by the object described. To make this more understandable:
"Ese es mucho carro." as in, "That is one hell of a car."
"Esa es mucha mujer." as in, "That is one hell of a woman" 
¿Is that even "sayable"?
"Ese es mucho imbécil." as in "That's an utter moron." and so on...
Hope I helped,
Gmouse 
No jeezle, you do not use this so often, it is a very colloquial form , maybe similar to what webdunce says.
Hay muchas moscas en esta habitación.
Hay muchas mujeres aquí.
Please look at gmouse's post, interesting,
If you had to translate it, would you change the noun. In English we can say "there are a lot of crazies there"
I did not know you could say crazies, but that is what I would use, good one, jeje
All the examples use "hay" so we dont see the verb conjugation (number) that Jeezle mentions. - qfreed
Oh, yes, true, we often use this expression with hay, but it can be used with other verbs, less usual though.
Mucha idiota cree que se las sabe todas.
Many female idiots think they know it all!
Ok...... so the question is........ Why? Why do you use singular there, or better yet, do you always use singular to say something like "There's a lot of flies in here?" Hay mucha mosca aquí. VS Hay muchas moscas aquí. Hanto tanto gente aquí, en verdad hay mucha mujer. Hay muchas mujeres. Is it really "Hay mucha mujer" and not the plural? Why? I have not seen this. Gracias.
"Mucha idiota cree que se las sabe todas."
So it's singular through and through.. I wish I could understand the reasoning here. Can any plural example be made singular this way and both are always right? Is it only for mucho, tanto, demasiado, etc......? Hay demasiado hombre aquí, No hay suficiente hamburguesa aquí. etc........? OR Hay demasiados hombres aquí, No hay suficientes hamburguesas aquí?
There is no S mispronounced or any grammatical mistake. It is an particular usage of the quantifiers which is characteristic of the Spanish language, and more common of colloquial registers. It happens with other quantifiers like "tanto", "demasiado",...
I wonder if this is similar to our "many a {singular noun}"
Many an American comes here.
There's many an idiot here.
.
We don't usually use the "many a" construction in sentences like those, but it seems similar.
A good point Jeesie, about the difficulty of the non trained ear to pick out slight changes in sound. However, in LoMasTv videos, the translation is printed directly below the printing of the spanish, which is directly below the video. So the translation I was giving was the translation provided by LoMasTv. I don't mean this a a criticism of LoMasTv because there videos are disparate enough and spoken in a normal speed so they seem to be giving me a greater ear for Spanish.
Often times the S is dropped in conversation. It's not really dropped but it sounds like it is dropped to the untrained ear, because it is so softly spoken. Are you sure they said "viene" and not "vienen".? That dropped S is often very hard for a non native to hear.
According to the dictionary, the plural of "americano" is "americanos".
or the feminine form "americanas".
It's just a small error that wasn't caught.
