L'orage fait peur aux enfants.

The storm scares the children.

Breakdown of L'orage fait peur aux enfants.

• l'enfant: the child
• l'orage: the storm
• aux: to the
• faire peur: to scare

Questions & Answers about L'orage fait peur aux enfants.

Why is it fait peur and not a single verb like effraie?

French has a very common expression faire peur à quelqu’un, which literally means to make fear to someone → to scare someone / to frighten someone.

So:

• L’orage fait peur aux enfants.
  Literally: The storm makes fear to the children.
  Naturally: The storm scares the children.

You could also say:

• L’orage effraie les enfants. = The storm frightens the children.

Both are correct, but faire peur à is more common in everyday speech and often feels a bit less formal than effrayer or effraie. Learners meet faire peur à very often, so it’s good to recognize it as a fixed structure.

What exactly does faire peur à quelqu’un mean, grammatically?

Think of faire peur à quelqu’un as:

• faire = to make / to cause
• peur = fear
• à quelqu’un = to someone

So the structure is:

[something] + fait peur + à [someone]
something causes fear to someone → something scares someone

Examples:

• Ça me fait peur. = That scares me. (literally: That makes fear to me.)
• Les araignées font peur à Marie. = Spiders scare Marie.

Why is it aux enfants and not les enfants or des enfants?

The verb phrase faire peur needs the preposition à before the person who is afraid:

• faire peur à quelqu’un = to scare someone

When that quelqu’un is les enfants (the children), you must combine:

• à + les enfants → aux enfants

So:

• L’orage fait peur aux enfants.
  Not: L’orage fait peur les enfants. (incorrect – missing the à) Not: L’orage fait peur des enfants. (would change the meaning to something like “gives fear of children,” which is wrong here)

What does aux mean exactly?

Aux is a contraction of:

• à + les = aux

It is used before a plural noun when the preposition à is required.

In this sentence:

• à is required by the expression faire peur à quelqu’un
• les enfants is plural
• So you get à + les enfants → aux enfants

Other examples:

• Je parle aux étudiants. = I’m speaking to the students. (à + les étudiants)
• Le film plaît aux enfants. = The children like the film. (literally: The film is pleasing to the children.)

Why is it L’orage and not just Orage without the article?

French almost always uses an article (definite or indefinite) before a singular countable noun, even where English might drop it.

• L’orage = the storm
• You generally do not say Orage fait peur… on its own.

Here, L’orage refers to the storm in general (that particular storm or storms as a phenomenon) that scares children.

Why is there an apostrophe in L’orage?

The apostrophe is due to elision: French often drops the vowel in le or la before a word that starts with a vowel or mute h.

• le + orage → l’orage

You do the same with la:

• la + école → l’école

It’s just to make pronunciation smoother: saying l’orage is easier than le orage.

Is orage masculine or feminine, and how can I tell?

Orage is masculine, so its article is le (or l’ before a vowel):

• un orage, l’orage, les orages

There’s no simple rule that always predicts the gender of every noun, so orage is one you just have to memorize as masculine. Seeing L’orage here actually tells you that the underlying article is Le, not La, since the adjective or agreement around it in other sentences will be masculine:

• Un orage violent.
• Cet orage est fort.

Why is peur used without an article? Why not la peur or une peur?

In the expression faire peur à quelqu’un, peur functions almost like part of a fixed idiom. It normally appears without an article in this structure:

• faire peur à quelqu’un = to scare someone
• Ça me fait peur. = That scares me.

You’d use la peur or une peur when you’re talking about fear as a noun in a more general or specific sense, not in this expression:

• La peur est une émotion. = Fear is an emotion.
• J’ai une peur terrible des serpents. = I have a terrible fear of snakes.

But with faire peur, it stays bare: faire peur à…

Could I say L’orage donne peur aux enfants?

No, that sounds wrong to a native speaker.

While donner can mean to give in many contexts, French does not say donner peur to mean to scare. The natural idiom is faire peur:

• ✅ L’orage fait peur aux enfants. = The storm scares the children.
• ❌ L’orage donne peur aux enfants. (unnatural / incorrect in standard French)

So you should memorize faire peur à quelqu’un as the standard way to say to scare someone.

What’s the difference between L’orage fait peur aux enfants and Les enfants ont peur de l’orage?

Both describe the same situation, but the focus is different:

• L’orage fait peur aux enfants.
  Literally: The storm makes fear to the children.
  Emphasis: on the storm as the thing causing fear.

• Les enfants ont peur de l’orage.
  Literally: The children have fear of the storm.
  Emphasis: on the children and their emotional state.

English does something similar:

• The storm scares the children. (storm focused)
• The children are afraid of the storm. (children focused)

Both French versions are correct and natural; you choose depending on what you want to highlight.

Why is it peur aux enfants and not peur des enfants?

Because the expression is faire peur à quelqu’un (to make fear to someone), not faire peur de quelqu’un.

• à introduces the person who is afraid:
  faire peur à quelqu’un = to scare someone

If you used de, it would change the meaning:

• avoir peur de quelque chose / quelqu’un = to be afraid of something / someone

For example:

• Les enfants ont peur de l’orage. = The children are afraid of the storm.
• L’orage fait peur aux enfants. = The storm scares the children.

Note that avoir peur de and faire peur à are two different but related patterns.

How would this sentence change in the past tense?

To put it into the past (passé composé), you change fait to a fait:

• L’orage a fait peur aux enfants.
  = The storm scared the children / has scared the children.

Structure:

• L’orage (subject)
• a fait (past of faire)
• peur (stays the same)
• aux enfants (to the children)

How do you pronounce L’orage fait peur aux enfants?

Approximate pronunciation, broken down:

• L’orage → [lorɑʒ] — “lo-RAZH”
• fait → [fɛ] — “feh”
• peur → [pœʁ] — roughly “per” but with rounded lips
• aux → [o] — “oh”
• enfants → [ɑ̃fɑ̃] — nasal vowels: “an-fan”

Spoken smoothly:

L’orage fait peur aux enfants.
[lorɑʒ fɛ pœʁ ozɑ̃fɑ̃]

Note the liaison:

• Between aux and enfants, you pronounce the x of aux as → [ozɑ̃fɑ̃].