This is inspired by Alisa, our new commentator who is trying to get a handle on the films. And also likes Aamir, thus the orgy of Aamir at the end this. It’s half tongue in cheek, just an excuse for fun songs, but also serious, these songs will really give you a leg up on some common words.
“a”=male noun ending, “i”= female noun ending. Thus “ladka” and “ladki”
“Tu”=informal you, used for children, close friends, etc. etc. “Meri/e”=Mine. “Main”= I. “Teri/e”=Yours Hai=am/are/is (also variations like “hoon” pop up sometimes)
Hindi numbers: 1=Ek, 2=Do, 3=Teen, 4=Char, 5=Paanch, 6=Cheh, 7=Saat, 8=Aath, 9=Nao, 10=Dus
Dus=10, one more time!
Pyaar=general love for a child or a spouse or a parent, Ishq=sexy love, Mohabbat=poetic passionate love. Aur=And
Dil=Heart; Deewana=Crazy; Pagal=also crazy
Dekho=Look; Na=Not/No
Chalo=Go
Mann=Soul
Nasha=Drunkiness/intoxication. Pehle=first
Hum=Me/us; tum=you; Akele=only/single/lonely
Des=Land; Desi=People of the land; Pardes=foreign; Pardesi=Foreigner; Jaana=go/travel; Nahin= No/Not
Grand finale!!!! Stupidest song ever, but by golly you will remember what “Ishq” means after this.
LOL at Ishq Wala Love! But it’s a really cute and catchy song 🙂
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And now I will remember forever and ever that “Ishq” means “Love”!
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There’s actually another song like this! It’s Galti Se Mistake from Jagga Jasoos 🙂
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Yes, but I have Jagga Jasoos!
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I still don’t understand what “Ishq” is. Don’t mind my question, I’m just not sure the type of love it’s referring to. I’m assuming it’s not true love but something based on passion and possibly just feelings, since Pyaar is love for parent, spouse, children, etc? Ishq is supposed to be something that is looked down upon when you say the word?
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I was just taking a break from ogling shirtless Aamir in Lagaan and saw this post and now I’m dying. Thank you!!
Related: In the scene where the British asswipe provokes Aamir into accepting the cricket challenge, he repeatedly uses the word “tum” and it dawned on me that it was analogous to the Spanish tu and meant to be insulting.
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Exactly!!!!! “Aap” is the formal, you will hear it said to elders or social superiors, or a wife to a husband. But not used much in songs, I think just because “aap” is a lot harder to sing and rhyme than “tu”. It’s also kind of old-fashioned, my impression is that most young people switch to using “tu” pretty quickly, kind of like going by first names instead of “Mr.” and “Mrs.” in American culture. Past a certain generation, the formality just starts to get left behind.
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Yeah, there’s a formal greeting and informal greeting in Telugu as well. I usually use the “aap” when I’m talking people I’m meeting for the first time or relatives that I’m not very close to. But I just use “tu” for older relatives if I’m really close to them. For example, I use “tu” while addressing my mom’s parents since I’m really close to them and we crack jokes and stuff. But I usually end up using “aap” when talking to my dad’s parents because my relationship with them is more formal.
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German, my family’s language, also has formal and informal. We haven’t spoken it fluently in generations, but there is a family story from about a 100 years ago, my great great-grandfather I think, who was trying to speak German in order to impress the minister when he visited their house (even though they were already mostly English speakers, they went to a German language church) and accidentally used the informal “you”. And I know this story because his wife brought it up until the day he died (which tells you something about my great great grandmother).
On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 11:14 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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There are actually three levels of formality – Aap, tum and tu.
Aap as you correctly said, you use respectfully. Elders, husband, bosses and colleagues, strangers and even children if you’re refined. The refined crowd uses “hum” (we/us) for “main” as well.
Tum is the formal informal address (if that makes any sense). Like if I were to address a classmate or a male friend who I’m not on the tu level with, I’d use tum with them. Again, it’s a refined level. You can use tum for your elder relatives and partner and parents if that’s what goes in your family.
Tu is the extremely informal and familiar one. Also derogatory or sufi depending on context. It’s a punjabi word. Urban Hindi heartland plus rajasthan do not have a native tu. Punjab, himachal, haryana and western UP have a native tu in their language and the tu is native to marathi too.
So it’s tu/tere (you, yours) in the punjabi lingo and always tum-tumhare (you, yours) in the Hindi proper/urdu lingo.
Think of the three levels as embodied by people-
Javed and Shabana as the Aap level
Deepti Naval and Farukh Sheikh as the tum level
Kunal Khemu and Riteish Deshmukh as the tu level.
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And Amitabh would be “don’t address him directly ever because you are too far below his notice to ever deserve acknowledgement”?
On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 11:37 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Not exactly. He got named in both the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers and he’s been a part of some rather shameless propaganda for both Modi as well the SP.
He’s a legend but not untouchable. He’s in the aap level and he’ll keep you in the aap level and you’ have to be pretty special for him to address you with the tum level!
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My plan, if/when I meet Amitabh, is just to ask about the grandkids. Because I have never gone wrong with that with any grandfather I have met. Photos, cute stories, I will pay attention to it all and win his heart in no time. And I’ll also complement his father’s poetry.
On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 9:02 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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See, you’re a celebrity in your own right already and if i were writing this story, I’d have your YouTube channel and this blog turn into a major promotional stop for all Indian films. So when you meet AB, it would be over a half hour interview where you get to ask him questions no one ever does.
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“Is it a wig?”
On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 11:14 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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It’s a valid question. It should be followed by ‘what products do you use to keep it so lush?’ 😁
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>I was just taking a break from ogling shirtless Aamir in Lagaan and saw this post and now I’m dying.
Those Rehan scenes don’t help either…
Works for me. )))
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What’s the one with “you are my soniya” ?? That’s where I learned soniya mean sweetheart.
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That’s the song from K3G.
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More posts like this!! These songs, and looking up their lyrics over the last few years have been how I’ve learned some Hindi words. Yaar is one I love to see how it gets translated in subtitles. I’ve seen everything from ‘dude’ to ‘bro’!
Bhai is another one that has a meaning depending on context. And woe to the young lover who is called bhai!
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And the Pardesi song is why I named my Youtube channel that!
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Not that I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Bollywood songs or anything but the Pardesi song is my absolute favorite. It’s gorgeous on its own but then in the context of the film it’s absolutely swoon inducing.
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That’s why I put it in! I figured if you saw raja hindustani as your first movie, you must live it
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Yaar literally translates to dost. Or more than friends in romantic context. It’s such a beautiful word.
And there are two variations of bhai
One is “bhai” (bhaa’yee) which is straight up “brother” and the other is “bha’yi” which is an emphasis word (it is also written as “bhai” though).
The second bhai (bhayi) you’d find in any rajshri film or group/family setting in a film. I know kajol has a lot of dialogues with the emphasis adding bhayi (bhayi hum toh kehte hain ki…)
It is also used in the phrase “haan, bhayi haan” (yes, indeed) Bhayi actually loosely translates as “indeed”
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I find it funny and ironic that AUR is pronounced OR but means AND.
SO
Bunty aur bubli
Sounds like
Bunty OR Bubli
But means
Bunty AND Bubli
Here’s a word that I learned from Hindi film, because every Hindi film has this word somewhere in it, bar none –
Zindagi = life
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Zindagi and Hamesha were two I considered and rejected for this post! Maybe for the sequel, once I get into fancy vocabulary instead of just “tu” and “main”.
On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 12:18 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I would love to see a post like this but with malayalam 🙂 I know I will never be able to talk, because it’s too difficult, but I’m so in love with this language that I started watching malayalam cartoons for children on youtube.
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If you’re only looking for vocabulary, not grammar, learn some Sanskrit words and you’ll be good for Malayalam, Telugu, and even some Tamil and Kannada (and also some Hindi). 🙂
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Thank you.
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I’m not the person who can do that! I got “brother” and “sister” now, but that’s about it.
On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 2:49 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Trivia time! The first Hindi word I looked up was khushbu (fragrance), because I heard it in two songs from different SRK films. The first was from Jab Tak Hai Jaan (Saans), and the second was ______. Any guesses?
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You stumped me! I’ll wait for someone else to figure it out, someone with actual language skills.
On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 7:38 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Hint: there are actually two others, one in a song by the same composer who did Saans.
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Jadoo teri nazar, Khushboo tera badan (Your gaze is magic, fragrance from your body” from Darr?
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That’s also the other one I thought at once (one of my favourite songs).
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I think the other one is in Chaiya Chaiya when he sings of the lover who is like fragrance and the language that is like Urdu.
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You got the ones from Dil Se (the other A.R. Rahman and Darr! Here is the third one, which I am AMAZED that Margaret didn’t get! I suspect she was too busy watch Shahrukh to pay attention to the lyrics.
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Yes, yes, yes! “Is she a girl or is she magic? is it perfume or is it a drug?” (ladki hai ya hai yadoo kushebu hai ya nasha)…Oh, I love this song!
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Khushbu is one of my favorite “song” words, along with Zindagi. For some reason itne and kitne sound nice to my ears too. Favorite use of khushbu is in Chalte Chalte, at @ 2:15 in this song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKNq8NbxotU
Sigh.
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One more thing to thank Shahrukh for.Hindi ceased being a nuisance and my marks started improving thanks to him. I spent a lot of time looking up the words of his songs on my trusty dictionary.But unfortunately there was never any occasion for using Baazigar or Deewana- not even in essays.Instead of those dry boring lessons,we really should have had dialogues from Hindi movies.
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I was super excited the first time I actually heard someone using “shaadi” “sharam” and “izzat” in a real life conversation I was overhearing at a store. Didn’t get to hear the rest of the conversation, unfortunately, so don’t know if they also dropped in “zindagi” and ‘khoobsurat”.
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It might not have been a pleasant conversation if that combination of words was present in it!
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I guess “Mann” means the mind when we use it in a day to day context. “Ruuh” means soul.(though it’s technically Urdu)
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I couldn’t stop laughing at all these noobies trying to learn Hindi from songs. No offense to any of you, because I learn Tamil the same way.
For anyone trying to learn Indian language, learn Sanskrit, and you get almost all Indian languages and their etymology very easily, because most of the words share same root.
My favourite word from Hindi is Madhuhoshiyan. I don’t know why but I just like the word. Someone try to find its meaning, as challenge, and one song in which it is used.
Hint : It starts with Jadu.
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Well, it is supposed to be a very silly post 🙂
On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 9:33 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Well it didn’t fail to be silly, espeically some commentators taking it their duty to enrich its content. 😀
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The trouble with learning Sanskrit in order to understand Hindi is that so much of the Hindi film language is actually Urdu. 🙂 I had to learn a lot of Urdu vocabulary just so I could understand common Hindi dialogues. I almost never understand the songs (without subtitles) because they have a very high percentage of Urdu words. Now the one time I could actually understand the songs, and thought the lyrics were very beautiful (in London Dreams), everybody else in the audience were complaining that they couldn’t understand the lyrics! And so it goes. But certainly learning some Sanskrit words puts you ahead in understanding many Indian languages, though not all, and then too, only if they are using language of a certain caliber. This doesn’t apply to Malayalam, which uses what are considered high-falutin’ Sanskrit words in other languages as everyday vocabulary.
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It is not just Malayalam, but Telugu and Kannada, and Marathi too to some extent share same sanskrit Roots. There was nothing called Urdu earlier. It was a synthesis of persian (which was court language of mughals) and hindi – the local language.
Since I learned Hindi as a third second language I have extreme difficulty in understand movies like Jodha Akbbar. Even I use subtitles 😦
My first language was Telugu, second was Sanskrit, third was Hindi and learnt English as a compulsary language. After learning these many languages, I think I am not at all interested in learning Urdu. Unlike many readers here, I don’t get to see Hindi movies in subtitles. I went to watch a movie that had so much Urdu, I walked out of theatre just before intermission. So, I don’t watch Hindi movies a lot in theatres. 😦
These days I am more acquainted with english than with Hindi, precisely because of Urdu factor. Where I stay viz. Hyderabad, Urdu is predominant and Hindi is raped (for the lack of better word) all over repeatedly to produce the Khichdi of Urdu-Hindi-Telugu, so much so that I forget whatever little Hindi I learnt in school. 😀
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As you say, it is very different needs when you are coming from knowing nothing and just want to be better able to understand the films, even with subtitles. The English subtitles generally convey the sense of what is said, but miss the shadings, the difference between “Pyar” and “Ishq”, for instance or the difference between formal and informal “you”. So what I have found helpful, and it sounds like other people who are coming at the language purely in terms of film viewing have also found helpful, is to learn a few of those words that cannot be accurately translated in subtitles, or just the most common words, just to kind of ground us in the dialogue as it flows past.
Most of the time, those words are in fact useless for “real life”! It’s not going to help you talk to a Hindi speaker if you know “zindagi” or “khushboo”. But it is very very helpful when trying to follow rapid dialogue through not-very-good subtitles. Heck, if nothing else it helps you realize when the subtitles have gone off by a few seconds and no longer match the dialogue.
On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 10:23 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Trust me Margaret, though they all are different (the words i mean), they don’t really make a difference – to me atleast. I think a large part of movie watching experience is being able to relate to and interpret the situations and characters created. The stronger the character, the better we are involved. Given this, i think you shouldn’t worry too much about such subtleties. Unless of course if you insist on poetic precision on every dialogue.
Relating to and understanding words largely depends on culture and familiarity. Someone like you might find it easy to differentiate between when you you love a girl and you love your mother, in Indian context. But, Love is a big thing in the west.
People hesitate to say L word for various fears and stuff. But they say ‘like’ very easily. But it’s quite opposite in India. Indian conception of love is differently defined. If you notice, they say “Love” word easily , but the other L word very sparingly.
I think it is these little differences that count and are lost in translation. Margaret, you are a prodigy in knowing this, so you don’t need to worry about anything else.
P.s. Culture and context matters for translation not details.
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This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing! I wish I knew more languages. My primary language is English. I grew up speaking Spanish as well but my older relatives passed away and now we are an English only family so my spoken Spanish is terrible (though I understand it okay). My son’s babysitter speaks Spanish to me and I answer her in English. It’s all really interesting to me how being multilingual is in fact super complicated (which is why I appreciated your comments on struggling with Hindi and Urdu).
To put all this in a movie context, it’s driving me a little crazy to enjoy these films but not understand the language, so even knowing a few words would help.
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Just to give you some movie background, Bombay (the city where most Hindi films are made) is within a Marathi speaking area. But there is a large immigrant population that also speaks Gujurati and Punjabi. Punjabi is very very close to Hindi, Marathi and Gujurathi not so much but at least part of the same language group. And there is also Urdu, which is the poetic Muslim court type language. Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, I think it might be similar to Spanish from Spain versus Spanish from Mexico. You can kind of understand each other, but you know it is from a different place.
In the early years of film (like, the 1950s), Urdu was commonly used for songs and often for dialogue as well. After Partition, a lot of great Urdu poets from the north ended up in Bombay, working in films. As the years went on, Hindi became more common, Bombay was more and more a city of immigrants from elsewhere in India, and the film industry was really really a place of immigrants (easiest place to get a job if you were an outsider) and the common language became “Hindustani” which is like Hindi, but with more loan words from Urdu and other dialects. That’s what you will hear in a lot of the films of the 1970s. Beginning in the 90s, English became more and more common. In general and also in films. The film people went from speaking high Urdu to barely understanding Hindi. That’s one of the big generation gaps, Aamir and Salman and Shahrukh grew up fluent in both Hindi and English (especially Shahrukh, he is from Delhi where everyone speaks Hindi, he knows all the esoteric swear words and stuff). They are all from Pathan families (that’s where “Khan” comes from), so they also probably learned a scattering of Urdu and Pashto from their elderly relatives. And Aamir and Salman growing up in Bombay would have learned a little Marathi. Basically they have what one of my friends described to me in college as “home” language, “street” language, and “school” language. Home would be whatever was spoken in the place their parents were originally from (for all three, a mixture of Hindi and Urdu), “street” would be Marathi for Aamir and Salman and Punjabi influenced Hindi for Shahrukh, and “school” would be English for all three.
But now, for the younger generation of stars, “English” is what they speak in all 3 places, their parents probably grew up speaking it after learning it in school, and it’s common in the upper middleclass areas where most of them were raised, and it is what they would speak in school. Films now, versus just 20 years ago, use way way more English dialogue, and their Hindi dialogue has taken a steep dive in quality as scriptwriters, actors, directors, everyone thinks and speaks in English now. Makes it a lot easier for fans like us who don’t really speak Hindi! You just need a few vocabulary words, because the scriptwriters only know a few words, and there’s all kinds of English thrown in as an “anchor” to make sure we follow it.
On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 11:20 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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You sound just like me. I deliberately try to speak Hindi with my North Indian friend. I know the vocabulary and can understand whatever they say. But when asked to speak, the other person would be chasing flies by the time I find the right word sleeping my brain. 😀 😀
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I saw an interview with Aamir where he says English is his first language and he doesn’t feel fully Indian because he grew up in Mumbai. So fascinating! And thanks for the background on the languages, very interesting and helpful.
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*Learn a few of those words that cannot be accurately translated in subtitles, or just the most common words, just to kind of ground us in the dialogue as it flows past. *
Yesterday I was watching a movie, and there was a scene when a girl loses her dupatta. It was important because the hero is in love with this girl but doesn’t know her name, and so when he finds this shawl he starts calling her as “dupatta girl”. But unfortunately who has done the subtitles didn’t know how to translate dupatta (I with my poor english know at least 2 words ) so he translated it as “upper cloth” and our girl instead of being “dupatta girl” has become “upper cloth girl”. I mean, how terrible it sounds?
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Exactly! “khushboo” is a good one, there really isn’t an English equivalent, and seeing “fragrance” or “smell” in the subtitles just seems insulting somehow. “Khushboo” seems to be more of a “scent/aura” thing.
On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 2:13 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Mann would be the place one has an internal monologue at.
Hindi is so harsh with aatma for soul 😁
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