I have always been fascinated by the changing lexicon of Hindi film songs and how it correlates with changes in popular culture with time.
To explore this phenomenon, I compiled a list of all unique words used in the titles of Hindi film songs – as documented on MySwar – and determined how many times they occurred in each decade of Hindi film music, from 1931 to 2020. In this post, I provide two views of this data:
- How certain words became in and out of vogue. I have done this analysis for a few sets of words.
- Wordclouds of the most used words in each decade
Matters of the Heart
The word दिल has been among the top three words in Hindi film song titles in every decade since the talkies. It was the most used word in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1990s and the 2000s, the second-most used word in the 1930s, 1970s and the 2010s, and the third most used word in the 1980s. Lyricists have commonly used other words like प्रेम, मन, प्रीत, इश्क़., प्यार, मोहब्बत and लव to express matters of the heart in Hindi film songs. After दिल, प्यार has been the word that has been used most consistently over time. Words like प्रेम, मन and प्रीत were used very often in the 1930s and 1940s but their usage has waned since then. मोहब्बत was popular in the 1940s and 1950s and has swapped places with इश्क़ in the last two to three decades. The increasing use of English words in the urban Indians’ Hindi was reflected in the rise of लव in the last three decades.
Life
जीवन lost out to ज़िंदगी 1950s onwards.
World
As in the case of जीवन vs ज़िंदगी, दुनिया, a Persian/Arabic origin word, dominated over tatsam words like जग, जगत and संसार. Interestingly, the usage of दुनिया has also reduced in recent decades.
Feelings
दुख was used often in the 1930s. Its usage declined after that. दर्द ruled the 1940s. If fell out of favour 1950s onwards but has made a comeback in the last two decades. Lyricists were preoccupied with ग़म from the 1950s to the 1990s. There was more खुशी than sadness only in the 2000s.
God
प्रभु was popular in the 1930s but not much after that. भगवान was big in the 1940s and 1950s. राम has been consistently used over time and was most the popular among various usages of God from the 1960s to the 1990s. A Twitter acquaintance made a very interesting observation – Hindi film lyricists started using राम less in songs as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement picked up steam. खुदा, मौला, अल्लाह and रब्बा have gained prominence in the last three to four decades.
I also generated a wordcloud view of the words that were used most frequently in Hindi film song titles. To those unfamiliar with wordclourds – the larger the word in the image, the more frequent is their occurrence in Hindi film song titles. I eliminated a few high-frequency words that don’t add value to this analysis – है, हैं, हूँ, की, के, का, कि, को, में, से, ने, पे, पर, हो, हे, रे, ऐ, री, जी, ओ, ये, यह, तो, जो, न, नहीं, ना, थी, था, थे. I used only the top 100 words in each decade to generate these wordclouds.
1930s
1940s
1950
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
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