{"id":18334,"date":"2019-09-26T13:42:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T13:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18334"},"modified":"2019-09-26T13:42:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T13:42:14","slug":"two-left-feet-dwy-droed-chwith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18334","title":{"rendered":"Two Left Feet \/ Dwy Droed Chwith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night I wrote a song called <strong>Two Left Feet<\/strong>, about someone who believes he can&#8217;t dance because he has two left feet &#8211; not literally, but in the idiomatic sense of being clumsy and awkward, especally when trying to dance.<\/p>\n<p>I used to feel like this, and still do a bit when I try to learn new dances, or different styles of dancing. I don&#8217;t let this stop me though, and dance anyway, which is what the song is all about. I&#8217;ll add a link to the song here when I&#8217;ve recorded it.<\/p>\n<p>I like to translate the titles of my songs and tunes into Welsh, so I looked for Welsh equivalents of this idiom. These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>bod \u00e2 dwy droed chwith = to be with two left feet<\/li>\n<li>bod yn drwstan eich traed = to be clumsy of foot<\/li>\n<li>bod yn drwstan ar eich traed = to be clumsy on one&#8217;s feet<\/li>\n<li>bod yn lloglog = to be clumsy \/ awkward<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Drwstan<\/strong> [\u02c8tr\u028astan] is a mutated form of <strong>trwstan<\/strong> which means clumsy, awkward, unsteady, bungling, unpolished, shoddy, unfortunate, unlucky, unhappy, sad or wretched.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lloglog<\/strong> [\u02c8\u026c\u0254\u0261l\u0254\u0261] means clumsy, awkward, untidy or baggy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Trwstan<\/strong> and <strong>Lloglog<\/strong> might be good names for characters in a story or song &#8211; maybe I&#8217;ll use them in my next song.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, <strong>trwstan<\/strong> is not related to the name <strong>Tristan<\/strong>, which comes, via Old French, from the Celtic name <em>Drystan<\/em>, from <em>drest<\/em> (riot, tumult).<\/p>\n<p>Other Welsh words for clumsy and awkward include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>trwsgl, afrosgo, lletchwith, trwstan, ysgaprwth, clogyrnaidd, anfedrus, di-lun, annehau, anneheuig, ysgafnrwth<br \/>\nannosbarthus, annechau, clemog, sgrongol, siagal<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The word <strong>awkward<\/strong> comes from the <strong>awk<\/strong>, an old word meaning odd, wrong, clumsy or uncomfortable, and the adjectival suffix <strong>-ward<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Awk<\/strong> comes from the Old Norse <em>\u01ebfugr \/ \u01ebfigr \/ afigr<\/em> (turned backwards, unkind, harsh).<\/p>\n<p>Sources: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/welsh-dictionary.ac.uk\/gpc\/gpc.html\">Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (A Dictionary of the Welsh Language)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/geiriaduracademi.org\/\">Geiriadur yr Academi (The Welsh Academy English-Welsh Dictionary Online)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Tristan\">Wiktionary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night I wrote a song called Two Left Feet, about someone who believes he can&#8217;t dance because he has two left feet &#8211; not literally, but in the idiomatic sense of being clumsy and awkward, especally when trying to dance. I used to feel like this, and still do a bit when I try [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,125,10,34,36,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-idioms","category-language","category-old-french","category-old-norse","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18334"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18346,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18334\/revisions\/18346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}