Da dieses Thema sehr kompliziert ist, muss ich Englisch benutzen.
I originally wanted to say the sentence "The soul leaves last" as in the soul being the last thing to leave the body when you die:
"Die Seele lass zuletzt."
I did my usual web searching to check out this translation and it appears to actually mean in German:
"Leave the soul at last."
And that the correct way to translate my desired sentence was:
"Die Seele geht zuletzt."
Apparently my feeling that "lassen" means "to leave" is not correct? What is really intriguing is that, if my above assertions are correct, using "lassen" radically changes the sentence to an imperative or command form as in "Leave now!" rather than the my intended intent of passively describing something leaving something behind from the point of view of a witness or observer.
Can someone refine my understanding so that I can understand the nuances of using "lassen" vs. "gehen", so I can make better verb choices in the future? Also, is the idea of "going" here as in the case of using "gehen" truly representative of my desire to express the idea of something leaving something else behind? The case here being of course, the soul leaving the body behind.
Vielen Dank.