‘A Dress Shirt’ has become ‘a Y-Shirt’ in Japan

We call a "dress" shirt a "Y-shirt" in Japan.

By the end of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), people had begun wearing dress shirts. At that time, dress shirts were only available in white, so they were called “white shirts”.

However, the word “white” was indecipherable as a word to Japanese speakers, to whom it sounded like the letter “Y”.

Many Japanese people have trouble with spoken English; the Japanese language has many vowels which makes hearing consonant sounds difficult. To illustrate this point, Japanese speakers refer to “white" as “howaito” (white=ホワイト) in romaji.

By the Taisho era (1912-26), people began referring to white dress shirts “Y-shirts”.

Even though many colors of dress shirts are available now, we still call them Y-shirts. In Japanese, it’s “waishatsu".

Here is a song named “Heya to Y shirts to watashi” (or “Our Room, Your Dress Shirts and Me").http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUBAUVg5Kxs

Thank you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_period
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taish%C5%8D_period
Koir, Naoko, thank you for helping.