I've been learning Welsh for almost 6 years now, and your blog, which I only found recently, has essentially been my only window into slang vs how Welsh is taught, because I live in rural Canada and do not know any local speakers (I had a similar experience with how we are taught French here [proper, France-French] vs how my neighbours across the river actually speak [QuƩbƩcois sounds almost nothing like school French, and is peppered with a lot of English swears and frenglish mutations of English words, especially where slang is concerned]). I *really* appreciate your explanations for why you choose specific words in your shitpost translations.
So I've gotta ask: there have been many times that I have wanted to reblog with just "mood" as a tag. Today's "naan before beer" for example. It made me wonder if there's a specific word in Welsh you'd use that has the same feel/casual sentiment that "mood" or "big mood" have in English. I hadn't actually learned the word for mood until I had this thought today. Prefacing with the fact that I totally understand that google translate isn't the most reliable, it seems like my options are:
hwyliau (moods, plural?) vs cyflwr meddwl ('state of mind' and also what happens if I type in "Mood." as a single word sentence)
Assuming that's correct, neither of them feels as punchy or casual as "mood" intends. The temptation to just tag with "mwd" was also very high, so I ran a quick search and apparently that's just mud (another new word I have just learned?), which is uhhh...also not really in the spirit of what I'm looking for.
So, all of this a very roundabout way of asking if there's already a 1:1 equivelant, and if there isn't, how would you, personally, choose to translate the sentiment? I am probably waaay overthinking this, sorry for the essay! D:
No apologies necessary, and thank you for the very fun question!
So we have two 'proper' options when it comes to a direct translation:
They both pretty much mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably to mean 'mood' or 'temper', but the issue with hwyl is that it also has several other meanings, including 'fun' and 'sail', as well as being part of a very common way of bidding someone farewell (hwyl fawr). So, if you were to reblog something from me and add 'hwyl fawr' in an attempt to say 'big mood', I'd just assume you're saying bye to me lol
Tymer doesn't really work either; it's got the same issue as its English counterpart in the fact that it's pretty much used in negative contexts. Mae ganddi dymer! She has a temper! It just doesn't exude the same neutrality as 'mood'; if you were to say tymer fawr, I'd just assume you're trying to say '[they have a] big temper'.
So that's the proper options out, which leads me the most popular way of adapting English slang into Welsh: spelling it out phonetically!
You're totally correct that translating 'mood' into mwd wouldn't work, because mwd already means 'mud', which ain't the vibe we're after.
However, mwd isn't actually the most accurate way of phonetically spelling 'mood' in Welsh! The 'w' in mwd is pronounced with a short sound, similar to the vowel sound in 'hook' - we need a long vowel sound here to replicate the long 'oo' in 'mood'!
So what do I recommend here? Why, I recommend my favourite tactic of all: slapping a to bach (circumflex) on that motherfucker.