*substrate language: Language originally spoken by the people of a conquered region that continues to have an influence even after it is superseded by the language of the conquerors.Īccording to Tacitusʼ Germania, the ancient Germanic peoples built houses using soft materials such as wood, straw, and mud. How has this historical fact influenced window-related linguistic cultural phenomena in the German linguistic area? This is the point that I will be exploring in this piece. The German word “Fenster” hence spread as a result of this original word of the substrate language* of Germanic being superseded by the foreign word from the Latin linguistic/cultural area.
The Germanic peoples originally referred to windows as “Windauge”, which is a word that shares its origins with the English word “window” and has the literal meaning “wind eye”. (The Latin word “fenestra” has its roots in the Greek word “phàino”, which means “to be made visible, to give light”.) The word “Fenster” has become so deeply embedded in the modern German vocabulary that there are probably few, even among native speakers, who are aware of its Latin roots. This word originated from the Latin word “fenestra”, which was introduced into the Germanic cultural region together with Roman architecture during the age of the Roman Empire. In German, the equivalent of what we call “mado” in Japanese are referred to as “Fenster”.
Following his analysis of windows in Japanese, in Volume 2 he examines windows in German.
Linguist Yasunari Ueda looks into the origins of words that mean “window” from around the world to explore the process through which the concepts of the word have expanded over the ages.