Hi.
Could you correct my English?
‘A Dress Shirt’ has become ‘a Y-Shirt’ in Japan
We say a dress shirt a Y-shirt in Japan.
In the end of Miji Era (1868-1912), people started wearing dress shirts. At that time, dress shirts were only white here, so they used to call it “white shirts”.
However, the word “white” was indiscernible to Japanese people, and sounded “Y”.
Many Japanese people have trouble with spoken English, because Japanese language has many vowels, and catching consonants is very hard. You would understand that by know we write “white” “howaito” (white=ホワイト) in rohmaji.
Anyway, people started calling white dress shirts “Y-shirts” in the early time of Tisho Era (1912-1926).
Now we have dress shirts with many colors, still we call them Y-shirts.
By the way, we write Y-shirs “waishatsu”.
This song is titled “Heya to Y shirts to watashi” (means like “our room, your shirts and me).
YouTube - Hiramatsu Eri - Heya to Y shirts to Watashi
Thank you.
Meiji period - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Taishō period - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia