Word
La fin dont mon frère a peur sera triste.
Meaning
The ending my brother is afraid of will be sad.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of La fin dont mon frère a peur sera triste.
être
to be
le frère
the brother
mon
my (mon, ma, mes)
avoir peur
to be afraid
Questions & Answers about La fin dont mon frère a peur sera triste.
Why do we use dont here instead of que?
We use dont because the expression is avoir peur de (to be afraid of). In French, when a verb or expression requires the preposition de, we use the relative pronoun dont to link it back to the noun it describes. You can think of dont as meaning 'of which' here.
Where did the word 'of' go? In English we say 'afraid of', but there is no de after peur.
Why is the verb sera in the future tense when the fear is happening now?
The sentence has two different clauses with their own timelines. The brother is afraid right now (a peur, present tense), but the actual ending of the movie or book has not happened yet, so it will be sad (sera, future tense of être). The verb sera matches with the main subject, la fin.
I sometimes see inverted word order in French. Could we say 'dont a peur mon frère'?