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Is "afraid to" ever heard of? I was watching Iron Man 3 with subtitles. I thought I heard "not afraid to you" but the subtitle shows "not afraid of you". I know that the particle "of" is the norm, but is "to" valid too?

You could listen to the sentence in the first 5 or 7 seconds of this short Youtube video. Do you hear "of" or "to"?

By the way I did a Google search but couldn't find anything interesting.

Update: I think the particle "of" is practically dropped in fast speech. So the sentence is heard as: "afraid-[schwa]-you"

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Your update is right. It's of, not to.

In this recording, the pronunciation of the unstressed preposition of is simply /ə/. The following consonant /v/ is dropped entirely.

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Both "of" and "to" can be correct:

  1. Be afraid of doing something:

    Luke is afraid of getting lost.

  2. Be afraid to do something:

    A lot of people are afraid to fly.

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  • 2
    But *"I'm afraid to you" is incorrect.
    – user230
    Dec 25, 2013 at 18:45

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