The

Estonian language Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language, written in the Latin script. It is the official language of Estonia and one of the official languages of the European Union, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people; 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,0 ...

has six

locative case In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...

s, descended from the locative cases of Proto-Finnic. They can be classified according to a three-way contrast of entering, residing in, and exiting a state, with two sets of cases: inner and outer. For some nouns, there are two forms of the illative: the regular suffix ''-sse'' (e.g. ), added to the

genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

stem, and an alternative, short form, which is either consists of a different suffix ( > ) lengthening (e.g. > , '' o:l> o::li'), and/or other change in the word. The always regular ''-sse'' illative ending is a newer innovation, and can sometimes have a slightly different meaning than the old "short form" illative, the latter having the concrete locative meaning (e.g.: 'into the room'), and the former being used in other structures that require the illative ( 'concerning the room...').

References

* Moseley, C. (1994). ''Colloquial Estonian: A Complete Language Course''. London: Routledge. * Oinas, Felix J (1966). ''Basic Course in Estonian''. Bloomington: Indiana University.
Estonian Language - Estonian Institute

Eesti keele käsiraamat - Käändsõna

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Estonian Locative System Estonian language Languages of Estonia Finnic languages Grammatical cases

See also

References

Notes