One of the most universal experiences when learning a new language – or, to be honest, speaking in any language! – is baglu [dros eich] geiriau (tripping over words).
Baglu means to trip or to stumble. It can be very literal, as in baglu dros eich traed (tripping over your feet), or metaphorical, as in the geiriau example. Dialectically, you may hear people say baglo, which is just a variant of the same word.
baglu
to stumble / to trip
Where does it come from? It’s a verbal form of the really interesting word bagl, which comes from the Latin baculum, and historically meant leg in Welsh.
You will probably be more familiar with the word coes for a leg, which is indeed what everyone says nowadays. But bagl isn’t completely extinct!
It appears in specific idiomatic phrases like baglau brain (crow’s legs, for messy handwriting), or bagl-di-bowt (a way of saying astride that is used in some Welsh-speaking communities in the South). It appears – sometimes in the form ffon fagl – as the main way of saying a crutch in modern Welsh. And of course, it appears in baglu.
Here’s how baglu mutates:
Soft mutation
faglu
Nasal mutation
maglu
Aspirate mutation
N/A
You can use baglu to say that you tripped or stumbled over something specific, in which case it goes with the preposition dros (over), or occasionally mewn (in), as in to catch one’s feet in something. As well as geiriau and traed, other things one might baglu dros could include gris (a step), carreg (a stone), or indeed croen banana (a banana peel).
But you don’t need to specify – after all, I can count quite a lot of times that I’ve been trwgl (clumsy) enough to just baglu over nothing at all!
Like in English, baglu can also refer to intentionally tripping up someone else in order to make them syrthio / cwympo (fall).
And it doesn’t have to be intentional – going back to that croen banana, you could say ‘wnes i faglu dros y croen banana (I tripped over the banana peel) or ‘wnaeth y croen banana fy maglu (the banana peel tripped me up). In the latter case I wouldn’t expect you to be assigning ulterior motivations to the innocent croen banana – you’re just saying that it was the reason for your bagliad (stumble as a noun).
Cododd Tomos i fynd, cyn baglu dros ei draed ei hun!
Tomos got up to go, then tripped over his own feet!
As you probably expected, baglu isn’t the only way to say to trip or to stumble in Welsh. There is also taro’ch troed (literally to hit one’s feet) or cymryd cam gwag (literally to take an empty step). And if you are stumbling along rather than simply tripping at one specific moment, you might want to use the verb hercian (to hobble).
Interestingly, hercian, like baglu, can also refer to siarad (speaking) in a faltering or camgymeriad (mistake)-ridden way.
To stumble upon something is different again – the best way to replicate this would usually be taro ar (to hit on). But you could also just say digwydd dod ar draws (to happen to come across) or digwydd cael hyd i (to happen to find).
Though it’s less common, baglu can be used quite differently, to mean to run for it or to scarper, often in the form baglu hi. This too comes from the old word bagl so you can think of it as meaning to leg it!
