ételben

ételben is the inessive form of the Hungarian noun étel, meaning “dish” or “food.” In Hungarian, étel functions as a common noun, and inessive forms are used to express location inside or within something. Thus ételben translates roughly to “in the dish” or “in the food.”

Morphology and pronunciation: ételben is formed by adding the -ben suffix to the stem étel, yielding ételben. The inessive suffix -ben follows standard Hungarian vowel harmony rules, and the resulting form is pronounced approximately as [ˈeːtɛlˌbɛn]. The word is used in contexts where the location of content inside a dish or meal is being described.

Usage: ételben appears mainly in descriptive, culinary, or nutritional texts to indicate that a substance or component is located within the dish. For example, az ételben található fehérje mennyisége magas means “the amount of protein in the dish is high.” In common speech, speakers more often use location expressions such as a tálban (in the bowl) or a levesben (in the soup) depending on the precise reference.

Related forms: Étel has the plural ételek in the nominative, and other nouns form their inessive similarly by adding -ben or -ban. The inessive is one of several locative cases in Hungarian that express various spatial relationships.

See also: Hungarian grammar, locative cases, inessive, étel.