Nuts and Bolts: locative.

 The locative case is, yes, to do with location.

There are languages in the world where you can add a few letters to a word and turn its meaning from ship, for example, to on the ship; or from city to in the city. That kind of thing.

However, most languages have invented other, more convenient ways of expressing this idea (in English we use the words at, by, in and on) and so the locative is now obsolete in most parts of the world, and used only occasionally in some others.

Even Latin, which loves both precision and changing the ends of words, had junked the locative by classical times.

However, the Finnish language still uses the locative for a few stock phrases, and it's still part of Hungarian, where it has a special use when speaking of certain cities. The locative is still to be found in some Slavic languages, too, but mostly there it's used with a preposition (a word like at, by, in and on) which rather takes away the point.

Several First Nation American languages are keeping the locative alive, but in most places it's been found to be unnecessary, and so its use has faded away.

I'm grateful that some people are keeping the locative case going. 

But I'm even more glad I don't have to be one of them.

Thing To Consider Today: the locative case. This word comes from locate, from the Latin word locāre, which means to place.