Inessive case

In grammar, the inessive case (abbreviated INE; from Latin: inesse "to be in or at") is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is talo·ssa in Finnish, maja·s in Estonian, куд·са (kud·sa) in Moksha, etxea·n in Basque, nam·e in Lithuanian, sāt·ā in Latgalian and ház·ban in Hungarian.

In Finnish the inessive case is typically formed by adding -ssa/-ssä. Estonian adds -s to the genitive stem. In Moksha -са (-sa) is added (in Erzya -со (-so)). In Hungarian, the suffix ban/ben is most commonly used for inessive case, although many others, such as on/en/ön and others are also used, especially with cities.

In the Finnish language, the inessive case is considered the first (in Estonian the second) of the six locative cases, which correspond to locational prepositions in English. The remaining five cases are: