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The instrumental case is a grammatical case used in some languages, such as Russian, to indicate the instrument used to perform an action. It is becoming rarer as languages tend to lose cases over time. English uses word order and helper words instead. Some languages use the instrumental case for other purposes, such as indicating occupation. Many ancient languages had this case, but it has disappeared in modern languages.
The instrumental case is a type of grammatical case. It is most commonly used to label a noun as the instrument by which the grammatical subject of a sentence has performed a stated action. The instrumental case occurs in some modern languages, notably Russian and some related Slavic languages, but overall it is relatively rare. The number of cases used in languages has tended to decrease over time, and many languages have lost instrumental cases they possessed in previous incarnations.
A typical example of the use of the instrumental case would involve a sentence in which a subject used a second noun as a tool or instrument to perform some other action, possibly to a third noun serving as the object of the sentence. English and many other modern languages express this idea with helper words and word order. “I cut down a tree with an axe” is perfectly clear and expresses the use of an ax as a tool or tool. “I felled an ax with a tree” contains the same words but has a completely different meaning and nonsense because the word order is significant in English.
Languages that have the instrumental case would convey this same meaning through the use of case endings. A subject ending would be added to the word “I”, an instrumental case ending to the word “axe” and an object ending to the word “tree”. Word order in such languages is often determined by convention but is not necessary to establish meaning as it is conveyed by case endings.
Russian and some other Slavic languages, especially Polish, use the instrumental case in this way, as do Hungarian and a few other languages. Oddly enough, despite having as many as fifteen cases for nouns, Finnish does not have a dedicated instrumental case. Languages that use the instrumental case to describe the tools used to perform an action often use this case in other situations as well. For example, the instrumental case can be used in Russian to indicate an occupation or career.
This case and many others were more common in ancient languages than in modern ones. Languages tend to lose cases over time, first combining multiple cases together and then eventually drifting away from this structure altogether. An ancestor of Latin had a dedicated instrumental case, but this case did not appear in Classical Latin. Old English also once had such a case. Modern Bulgarian is very similar to Russian but has abandoned almost all remnants of a grammatical case system.
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