"Tu es malade" and insults

Hello and welcome back. Today we will talk about a phrase in French that I often heard from my students in Benin. That phrase is, you’re sick, or tu es malade.

One example of this phrase is when I was at the football pitch. One student had a bad day because they played badly. They played poorly. So their friend said, tu ne sais pas jouer au football. And they responded, tu es malade.

A second example is when I taught a class and I heard a student talking. I asked, who is talking? One student pointed to a boy and he said, monsieur il ne vous écoutait pas. And the other student said, non tu es malade. In French, tu es malade, is an insult. It is offensive to say to another person.

In English the direct translation is, you are sick. Tu es malade. Or, you’re sick, if we contract you and are. You’re. But we don’t say, you’re sick, as an insult. We will say you’re sick if you have a maladie. You are coughing. We can say, you are sick. This is a literal use of the phrase.

We might also say someone is sick if they do something that is wrong. So an example is we are watching television and the news is talking about a man who took his grandmother’s money so he could buy cigarettes. He stole his grandma’s money. He stole a hundred dollars from his family to buy cigarettes. That’s sick. He is a sick man. He is mentally ill. He has a maladie in his head. This is usually an exaggeration. We don’t really think the man is sick but we say he’s sick because he did a bad thing.

The third way we use sick is positive. It means cool. We can say, wow that’s sick. He is a sick guitarist. And this use is very informal. It is street language. It comes from the sport skateboarding in the United States in the west. I am from the west coast of the United States, the Pacific coast of the United States. In my childhood I heard many people say that’s sick. That’s cool. It is not used frequently now. It is a phrase from my childhood in the 90s but sometimes you will still hear the word sick and it will be positive.

If you want to insult in English, do not call them sick, because that is not a good insult in English. Instead you can call them a few names. You can call them a jerk. You’re a jerk. A jerk is a person who is rude and impolite. They say rude things. A jerk. You can call them stupid because they are not intelligent. You’re stupid! Or you can just tell them to shut up. Shut up! That is to close your mouth. A door can open when we enter a house and the door can close after we enter. To close to your mouth means to be quiet, so in French I heard my students in Benin say, tais-toi, and shut up is the same as tais-toi. None of these insults are explicit. They are not improper to say. There are other words that are much more rude that you should never use in a polite context. So I hope you understand better how to respond to an insult in English. You’re stupid. You’re a jerk. Shut up!

These are all good ways to respond in English like you would when you say tu es malade. Thank you and I will see you in the next episode.