What does it mean to “black-paint” someone in Swedish? Posted by Stephen Maconi on Dec 18, 2015 in Swedish Language, Vocabulary
Like many other languages, the Swedish language has a large variety of different expressions. Some of these expressions are similar to expressions in other languages – and some are more-or-less unique to Swedish. These expressions vary from being several words long to being only one word.
One useful piece of interesting vocabulary in Swedish is the word svartmåla, a verb which, very literally interpreted, means “to black-paint”.
Like in many cases with languages, what you see is not what you get. Svartmåla in no way actually means to paint something black. It has a much more figurative meaning than that. So what does it really mean?
I’ll give you some clues. The subject you use with svartmåla is almost always a person or group, and often, the verb is also used with a personal or group object, such as statsministern “the prime minister” or Världshälsoorganisationen “The World Health Organization” (WHO). The word has a negative meaning. It doesn’t imply direct action, but rather indirect action. And it doesn’t mean “to kill” or “to hurt” in a direct way.
Still can’t guess what it means?
Svartmåla means “to make [someone] look bad/evil” or “to defame”. So, if someone doesn’t like someone else, they will svartmåla them in the media. Let’s give you an example of how we use svartmåla:
Oppositionen svartmålade statsministern genom att publicera arga bilder på sociala medier.
The opposition made the Prime Minister look bad by publishing angry images on social media.
Getterna gillade inte korna, så de försökte svartmåla dem [genom att slänga stenar på varandra och skylla på korna].
The goats didn’t like the cows, so they tried to make them look bad by tossing stones at each other and blaming the cows.
Ah, there’s nothing quite like barnyard politics. In both examples.
Svartmåla is conjugated like this: svartmåla, svartmålar, svartmålade, svartmålat, svarmåla!
The basic formula is: [person A or group A] svartmålar [person B or group B]. Lätt som en plätt – easy as pie!
Let’s practice using svartmåla! Make us a sentence using it in the comments!
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About the Author: Stephen Maconi
Stephen Maconi has been writing for the Transparent Swedish Blog since 2010. Wielding a Bachelor's Degree in Swedish and Nordic Linguistics from Uppsala University in Sweden, Stephen is an expert on Swedish language and culture.
Comments:
Dick:
Mannen svart målade sin hustru genom att publicera elaka foton av henne på Facebook.
Sarah:
pojken försökt att svart måla hans bror så han skulle inte ha julklappar från jultomten.
A seasonal offering. Please correct me if I’m wrong!
Sarah.
Michael Theodosiou:
Många tidningar försökte svartmåla Michael Jackson när startade han bli vit..
Deahna:
Interesting… Thank you for sharing.
I had expected something along the lines of German “schwarzmalen” which also has nothing to do with painting. That means to talk about a situation and/or future in negative terms, making it seem worse than it is/will most likely be. We also use “schwarzsehen”.
Iris:
@Deahna It is funny, I thought exactly the same thing. However, we have “anschwärzen” in German, too, which is basically exactly the same as svartmåla! Funny false friend 🙂
Johannes M:
This title caught my eye. It’s interesting, in Finnish we have our own version of this, but it’s not a loan word; it’s that same expression translated word-for-word using Finnish words. “Mustamaalata”.
I didn’t know this was a thing; loaning things by translating them word-for-word instead of taking the actual word. Now I can’t be sure which Finnish idioms and expressions are even originally Finnish!