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
triste
sad
dont
whose / about which / of which
la fin
the ending
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'?
No, you must keep the standard subject-verb order here. Even though French sometimes allows inverting the subject and verb after other relative pronouns like que, after dont, you should stick to the standard order: subject (mon frère) followed by the verb (a peur).
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