Breakdown of Hänen käsilaukkunsa lienee yhä hukassa.
olla
to be
hän
he / she
yhä
still, yet (continuing)
hukassa
lost
Questions & Answers about Hänen käsilaukkunsa lienee yhä hukassa.
What exactly is lienee and why is it used instead of on ehkä?
lienee is the 3rd person singular form of the potential mood of the verb olla (to be). The potential mood expresses probability ('is probably' or 'might be'). While you can absolutely say on ehkä (is maybe), using the potential mood is a very natural and elegant way to express uncertainty in Finnish. Note that olla is irregular here: its potential stem is lie- rather than being based on the infinitive.
Since Hänen already means 'her', why does the noun also need the -nsa suffix in käsilaukkunsa?
In standard Finnish, the third-person pronouns (hänen, heidän) require the noun to also take a possessive suffix. While in casual spoken Finnish you might just hear sen käsilaukku without the suffix, formal standard grammar demands both the genitive pronoun and the -nsa (or -nsä) suffix together.
Why is the word for 'lost' in the inessive (in) case here (hukassa)?
The noun hukka historically means 'wolf' or 'ruin'. The phrase olla hukassa (literally 'to be in the wolf') is the standard Finnish idiom for a thing or a person being lost or missing. Because it describes an ongoing state of being, it takes the inessive case ending -ssa.
Could I use vielä instead of yhä to say 'still'?