"Mi timas, ke li forlasos min."
Translation:I am afraid that he will leave me.
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Question: why is it forlasos rather than forlasus? We are not talking about a future event here, but about an incertainty, a possibility. Some languages would use a subjunctive here - not Esperanto?
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Esperanto has not got a subjunctive. It uses the normal form. If it is unreal you can use the conditinal form "forlasus", but in this case the English sentence gives no hint for unreality.
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No hint for unreality? On the contrary, nobody's leaving, there's just fear, so the leaving is at this stage perfectly unreal. That's when other languages use the form indicating unreality, usually called subjunctive, or jussive in Esperanto. I'm still confused. But it's true, an internet search gives me mostly 'mi timas ke ---os' and 'mi tesperas ke ---os', and very few examples with -us. So it is correct alright. I'm just trying to figure out why.
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If it was that unreal you could use “would” in English. Happening in the future gives a uncertainty, but not necessarily unreality. But of course things are less clear than talking about the past.
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Thank you. The trouble is, languages 'think' differently about these things. Esperanto apparently does not have the position that I at first believed to have. It is in this respect less similar to Spanish and Italian than I thought, and somewhat more similar to English.
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Esperanto does in fact have a subjunctive. The ending -U is called the "Jussive" and it is the form that acts as both the imperative and the subjunctive moods
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If you'd use "forlasus", then you should use timus as well.
"Mi timus, se li forlasus min" - note, that you can't use "ke" then, you need "se" - I'd be afraid, if he'd leave me.
You use this sentence if you are certain or if you are not certain! There is no difference here in Esperanto.
And we are talking about a future event here, when we use this sentence.
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Indirect statements use the same verb forms as direct statements.
Direct: La voĉo de timo diras al mi: "Li forlasos vin."
Indirect: Mi timas, ke li forlasos min.
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I've been studying some Esperanto words outside Duolingo's course and I'd found the word "lasi" which I was told it translated as "leave". So, is it correct? Can "forlasi" and "lasi" be used indistinctly?
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It's somehow similar to spanish "dejar", I would rather translate forlasi as "abandonar". Hope it's helpful.
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The first sense of lasi is to let. Only in sentences like Lasu min! it is translated as Leave me alone.
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Well if it's anything like the others are saying, then it's like using abandonar (Spanish) and laisser (French). And also, if you think about it, For means away or out if I remember correctly. So it's like "to leave away/go away/depart" etc. I would think of it almost as a sortir vs partir kind of situation as well. But this is also in it's own language and culture so you could even just disregard these parallels! :)
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So what are the differences between "forlasi", "lasi", and "eliri"? I know eliri is more like "exit" so it couldn't be used here, but could you say "forlasi" if you were, say, leaving a museum?
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Eliri literally means ‘to go from’, because ‘iri’ plus ‘el’. Forlasi means ‘to abandon, forsake, or desert’. Lasi means ‘to leave [object]’; like ‘I left my book on my desk.’ So unless you want to abandon the museum, you would use eliri.
