Relative clauses with 'was'
I have a question about how relative clauses beginning with "was" interact with prepositional adverbs. Do you have to spell out the whole prepositional phrase, or can you use the prepositional adverb. For example, what would be the proper way to form this sentence?

Ich habe Angst davor, was passiert ist.
Ich habe Angst vor dem, was passiert ist.

Danke im Voraus!
Adam

Question

Relative clauses with 'was'
I have a question about how relative clauses beginning with "was" interact with prepositional adverbs. Do you have to spell out the whole prepositional phrase, or can you use the prepositional adverb. For example, what would be the proper way to form this sentence?

Ich habe Angst davor, was passiert ist.
Ich habe Angst vor dem, was passiert ist.

Danke im Voraus!
Adam

Answer

You do have to spell the whole thing out. Relative pronouns can't refer back to adverbs, only to nouns and pronouns.

Answer

Should you change the question language to German perhaps?

Answer

I'm not a native speaker but the second one is definitely better.

Answers · 4

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