Learn Hindi From Film Songs for Hindi Movies

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My continuing series!  Which is half tongue-in-cheek and half serious.  If you truly are only interested in learning Hindi in order to better appreciate the films, these are the words that will help you.  If you want to actually learn Hindi to read books and talk to people and stuff, this is useless.  It’s very rare to need the word for “unfaithful” in common conversation.  At least, not my conversations, I don’t know your life. (first post here, second post here, if you want to learn even more words!)

Unfaithful, in case you need it in your everyday life (That DVD website was unfaithful to me!), is “Bewafaa“.  Which is in loads of songs, and even the title of movies, but I like it best in this song.  Which opens by saying “Bewaafa Hum nahin, Bewafaa Tum nahin” meaning “I was not unfaithful, you were not unfaithful”.

 

This word you hopefully won’t need, “Chor“.  Means “thief”.  “Chori” means=like a thief.  And it is often said with “Chupke“, meaning “quietly”.  You might also hear “Chup”= meaning “quiet”, snapped out as an order on occasion.  As with all adjectives, you might also hear them repeated for emphasis, “Chori chori chupke chupke”.

 

Here’s a word that is very useful for some of us for real life, “Gori“=beautiful, or slang for “white girl”.  As in, “check out that gori buying all the DVDs!”

 

Along with “Gori”, a word I am sure we will all hear used to describe us, preferably by a cheerful street tough who is falling for our perkiness, “Khoobsurat“=Beautiful.

 

One of my favorite songs because this baby is SO FREAKING CUTE.  And also teaches us the useful word “Duniya“=World.  As in, “My world is you”, the chorus of this song.  Something you should be able to say if you ever meet a freaking cute baby.

 

Speaking of adorable baby and single father songs, “Rishta/tey“=Relationship or bond.  As in “I have a strange bond with that film star, although we have never met”.

 

Another adjective doubled song “Dheere“=Slowly.  “Meri“=My.  “Zindagi“=Life

 

And a nice simple one with some philosophy in it.  “Kal“=tomorrow.  “Ho“=is.  “Na“=not.  Tomorrow is or is not.  Really, something you can drop into any situation in response to any statement.  “Would you like fries with that?”  “Tomorrow may or may not come.”

 

A classic! “Chand“=Moon.  “Mere“=My.  “Dil“=Heart.  “Chandini“=Moonlight.  “Ho“=Are.  “Tum“=You.  “The moon is my heart, you are the moonlight”.  Another thing to say to a super cute baby, or a movie star, or whoever.

 

Another song from the same movie, which I love because the way the singer is singing and everything fully conveys the meaning of the song.  “Kya“=What. “Hua“=Happened.  “Tera“=Your.  “Wada“=Promise.  “What happened to your promise????”  (he is very aggressive about asking her this, and you can see how guilty she feels).  This is something you can use when your taxi driver charges you extra.

 

And to end, something fun and happy which completely fails to convey the mood of the song.  “Badi“=Great.  “Mushkil“=problem/complication.  He’s singing about the great problem of having fallen in love at first sight with a woman who doesn’t want him, but he is so happy about it! But you can say it all grumpy, like “loosing my luggage is a big big problem”.

(SPOILERS happy for now, later he will kill everyone she loves and they will get trapped together in a strange sexual revenge physical therapy murder kind of situation)

15 thoughts on “Learn Hindi From Film Songs for Hindi Movies”

  1. I’m happy you found the original Chand Mera Dil. When I look, it’s the brief excerpt from Om Shanti Om.

    I always wondered why the song sounded so familiar to me, and finally this year realized it’s because of this:

    Not really a plagiarism-level copy, but maybe one influenced the other?

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    • Wouldn’t be surprised. RD Burman was possibly the greatest composer of the modern era, but he wasn’t above being inspired by another artist. And he had an amazingly wide taste and awareness of the world.

      The key to finding the original is to know which movie it is from! Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, which I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend. It’s got a crazy wonderful plot, and in the middle of everything there is a “song competition” which is a good 15 minutes straight of Rishi and The Other Guy trading off songs. Chand Mere Dil is in the middle of it all, a lot of the video versions give you the whole medley so you have to dig it out. It’s like “The Medley” from Mujhse Dosti Karoge, but all original songs that Burman just dashed off.

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  3. It’s nice to re-meet some songs and I like your humerous Hindi lessons 🙂
    I found Heyy Babyy a well-made remake of the French and then US movie (3 men & a baby)…all three are heart warming and funny and specific 🙂

    What may be the difference between “dheere, dheere” and “haule, haule”?

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  4. Kal ho na ho is such an interesting phrase. It means two distinct things – “kal” may or may not happen/arrive/occur as well as “it” may or may not happen (tomorrow/ever/general future tense)

    You’d find the phrase “ho na ho” a lot in 90s and older era films a lot. It usually meant “I suspect” when it began a sentence (ho na ho, yeh usi ki chal hai/I suspect it’s his ploy) and when used in the middle, it means “may or may not” (kal ho na ho/may or may not happen; Mujhse ho na ho, tumse nahi hoga/whether I can do it or not, you certainly can’t)

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