Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
What language(s) do they speak in these films?
Bollywood films are in Hindi, I think. Plus, English/Hinglish. I agree that it's a strange form of English. In terms of accent it seems close to Russian (they have the same [r]. Grr, I can't pronounce it properly, I've got "French" [r]; also the same [h], including the Ukrainian version).

There's also this South Indian cinema (in Tamil, Telugu, and other languages), which is a whole other story but I don't think I'll ever go to these... I've a feeling they can only be downloaded on the net since no one distributes them in Russia and I just prefer buying dvds. I think at least with Hindi films we are lucky here that they are dubbed. I usually quite like the way it's done. For example, Vladimir Konkin who played Sharapov in "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed" lended his voice to many characters played by Shahrukh Khan and did it quite well, I should say. I read that for some people reading subtitles is just an insurmountable task so apparently some Americans totally rule out foreign films because of this.

I'm learning Hindi through the songs. It's a lot of fun because words get repeated. There are so many synonyms for "love" -- pyar, ishq, mohabbat, prem, and they all seem almost complete synonyms, not like "infatuation," "passion," etc. But perhaps it's just my insufficient knowledge. I like the language, somehow it looks really easy.