Mandatpingis properly made it into the Swedish language in 2018, after an exceptionally close election result.
Mandat refers to a seat in parliament and pingis means ping-pong, so the term was coined to refer to one parliamentary seat which, in the 2018 election, switched back and forth between two of Sweden's parties during recounts.
As we've talked about in other articles, the word mandat can also mean mandate in the English sense, to refer to an order or authorisation in a broad sense, such as "the government has a strong mandate from the voters", or in Swedish, regeringen har ett starkt mandat från väljarna.
But the Swedish version is often more specific. You might say that partiet vann 25 mandat, but you wouldn't say "the party won 25 mandates" in English – it would sound unnatural and Swenglish. In English you would instead say "the party won 25 seats".
Similarly, if Swedes accidentally talk about a "mandate period" in English, an English-speaker might understand what they mean, but it's not natural English. But in Swedish, mandatperiod is the correct way of referring to a term of office or parliamentary term – the period of time in an electoral cycle during which an elected representative, or a set of elected representatives, are officially in power.
As for the pingis part of mandatpingis, it's a shortened version of "ping-pong," which is also called bordstennis (table tennis) in Swedish.
You may have noticed that Swedes like to shorten words and give them an -is ending, such as kompis (kompanjon – friend), kondis (konditori – café, or kondition – fitness) or mellis (mellanmål – a snack, usually a word reserved for talking with children). It's so common that we even wrote an article about why so many Swedish words end in -is.
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The creation of -is words has been going on since at least the 18th century so it is an established word-building technique in Swedish.
It's interesting not just because it can be used with so many kinds of words (nouns, adjectives, interjections and more), but also because it's what we call a productive trend (an incredibly productive one, actually), since new -is words make their way into speech and, therefore, the Swedish language every year. In theory, you could apply the chop-off-the-end-and-add-is formula to many words, and people would understand what you mean.
As for exactly where this linguistic trend comes from, it's likely that Swedish -is has its roots in the Latin and Greek suffix -is.
Several linguists have said that students in the 18th century would use Latin in wordplay, by adding different suffixes to common words and names for comic effect.
There's also the word fickpingis (pocket ping-pong), which is slang for masturbation (picture someone with their hand in their pocket and... on second thought, don't picture it).
Example sentences:
Vi kommer se en hel del mandatpingis när utlandsrösterna räknas.
We'll be seeing quite a bit of seats switching back and forth when the votes from abroad are counted.
Mandatpingis uppstår när marginalerna är små.
Seat-swapping occurs when the margins are thin.
Villa, Volvo, Vovve: The Local’s Word Guide to Swedish Life, written by The Local’s journalists, is available to order. Head to lysforlag.com/vvv to read more about it.
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