The essive-modal case is a case in the Hungarian language

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

 that expresses either the state, capacity, task in which somebody is or which somebody has (Essive case

Essive case

The essive or similaris case carries the meaning of a temporary location or state of being, often equivalent to the English "as a ".In the Finnish language, this case is marked by adding "-na/-nä" to the stem of the noun....

, e.g. "as a reward", "for example"), or the manner in which an action is carried out, an event happens, or the language which somebody knows (Modal case

Modal case

In linguistics, the modal case is a grammatical case used to express ability, intention, necessity, obligation, permission, possibility, etc. It takes the place of English modal verbs such as can, could, would, might, may....

, e.g. "sloppily", "unexpectedly", "speak German").

An example of this would be in the sentence "Beszélek magyarul." (I speak Hungarian.) The sentence denotes the ability of being able to speak the Hungarian language. According to vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....

rules, ul becomes ül in cases such as "Beszélek németül." (I speak German.) because the word for "German", német is composed completely of median and/or frontal vowels.