Finnish noun cases
Finnish nominals, which include pronouns, adjectives, and numerals, are declined in a large number of grammatical cases, whose uses and meanings are detailed here. See also Finnish grammar. Many meanings expressed by case markings in Finnish correspond to phrases or expressions containing prepositions in most Indo-European languages. Because so much information is coded in Finnish through its cases, the use of adpositions (postpositions in this case) is more limited than in English, for instance. List of Finnish cases. Note regarding the examples: Finnish has no grammatical gender nor definite and indefinite articles. Thus, context may be  required to get an accurate translation. Grammatical cases. The grammatical cases perform core linguistic functions such as signaling who initiates an action or the object of an action. Nominative. The basic form of the noun. Genitive. Characteristic ending: possibly modified by consonant gradation: . For the nouns and adjectives that have two vowel stems, the weak vowel stem comes from the genitive singular. Accusative. This case marks direct objects. The accusative indicates telicity; that is, the object has been finalized or the intended action is done. Note that a morphologically distinct accusative case exists in Finnish only for the personal pronouns  and the personal interrogative pronoun: In contrast, nouns, adjectives, numerals, and other pronouns, do not have a distinct accusative case. Instead, singular direct objects look like the genitive in direct address ("Tuon maton" "I'll bring the carpet") and in the nominative with both imperatives ("Tuo matto!" "Bring the carpet!") and passives ("Matto on tuotu" "The carpet has been brought"). Plural direct objects always appear in the nominative plural. Traditionally, Finnish grammars have considered, on syntactic grounds, the accusative to be a case unto itself, despite its appearing identical to the nominative or genitive case. The recently published major Finnish  grammar Iso suomen kielioppi takes a morphological point of view and does not list the accusative except for the personal pronouns and "kuka", while at the same time acknowledging the argument for the traditional view. The existence or nonexistence of an accusative case in Finnish thus depends on one's point of view. Historically, the similarity of the accusative and genitive endings is coincidental. The older accusative ending was "-m", but in modern Finnish an "m" has become an "n" when it is the last sound of a word. Partitive. Characteristic ending: -ta/-tä, where the 't' elides if intervocalic. The  consonant stem of a noun (if any) comes from the partitive singular. Otherwise the ending is added to the strong vowel stem. The formation of the partitive plural is rather variable, but the basic principle is to add '-i-' to the inflecting stem, followed by the '-(t)a' partitive ending. However, in a similar way to verb imperfects, the '-i-' can cause changes to the final vowel of the stem, leading to an apparent diversity of forms. Locative cases. The most prototypical function of locative cases is to indicate location, as the name suggests. However, they are also used in a  range of syntactic constructions, much like prepositions in Indo-European languages (e.g. "We're *at* school" vs. "We're good *at* math", in which only the first "at" has a locative meaning). In Finnish, the suffix "-lla" as a locative means "on (top)", but may function to code the idea of "being used as an instrument", e.g. "kirjoitan kynällä" "I write with a pen" (lit. 'I write pen-on'). Two different kinds of suffixes are used, the internal locatives ("-s-") and the external locatives ("-l-"). The word in a locative case refers to the verb, for example, in "Sovitan housuja  ikkunassa" the word "ikkunassa" "in the window" refers to the verb "sovitan" "I try on", not to the adjacent noun "housuja" "pants". The sentence reads out as "I'm in the window, trying on pants". However, in context due to the instrumental nature of the window and the word order, the sentence stands for "I'm trying on pants (on display) in the window". Internal locatives. Inessive. Characteristic ending -ssa/-ssä added to the weak vowel stem. Elative. Characteristic ending -sta/-stä added to the weak vowel stem. Illative. The ending is usually "-Vn", where "V" indicates the preceding vowel of the  stem. Singular forms use the strong stem form. In cases where the genitive stem already ends in a long vowel the ending is "-seen" (singular) and "-siin" (plural). However, for words of one syllable the ending is always "-hVn" and this form is also used in plural forms where the plural stem already contains a vowel (other than "i" ) immediately before the plural "i". External locatives. Adessive. Characteristic ending -lla/-llä added to the weak vowel stem. Ablative. Characteristic ending -lta/-ltä added to the weak vowel stem. Allative. Characteristic ending -lle added to the weak vowel stem. Section::::"General locatives" and other  cases. The name "general locatives" is sometimes used of the essive and translative cases (as well as partitive above) because their oldest meanings imply that they have been used to indicate location. Essive. Characteristic ending -na. If the noun or adjective has two vowel stems, the strong vowel stem comes from the essive singular. NB the consonant stem used to be quite common in the essive, and some nouns and adjectives still have this feature. Translative. Characteristic ending -ksi added to the weak vowel stem. The ending is -kse- before a possessive suffix. Instructive. Characteristic ending -n added usually (but  not always) to plural stem. Abessive. Characteristic ending -tta. Comitative. Characteristic ending -ne (plus a possessive suffix for nouns but none for adjectives). This ending is added to the plural stem, even if the noun is singular, which may cause ambiguity. Others. Prolative. The prolative is almost exclusively found in a few fossilised forms in modern Finnish and is therefore not usually considered a living noun case (it is more common in Estonian but not considered a case there either). Its meaning is "by way of", some common examples being The Finnish locative system. The Finnish language has eight locative  cases, and some Eastern dialects symmetrify the system with the exessive case. These can be classified according to a three-way contrast of entering, residing in, and exiting a state, and there are three different systems of these cases. This system is similar to that of Estonian, and can be reconstructed to the Proto-Finnic locative system. It is immediately noticeable from the table that the "exiting" forms ("sta/lta/nta") have the same consonant as the "residing" forms ("ssa/lla/na") added with the Finnish partitive case ending "-ta". This may be traced into a Proto-Uralic ablative ending , which is preserved in what is now the partitive case. Also, the Finnish system is somewhat simpler than in the Hungarian language, where there is a separate system for "to the top", "on top", and "off from the top". The exessive case is not used in standard Finnish, but it is found in Savo Finnish and Karelian.