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How do you ask for someone's shoe size in Korean?

I've heard it before at bowling allies.

I think it is something like: 몇 씨이에요?

4 Answers 4

7

I think what you heard is "몇 신어요?", literally "What size do you wear?".

A more general phrase would be "신발 사이즈가 어떻게 되세요?" "What is your shoe size?"

In banmal, "신발 몇 신어?" / "신발 사이즈 얼마야?"

3

You could have heard "몇 사이즈예요?" or "몇 사이즈이에요?"

The noun 사이즈 is pronounced as [싸이즈] and it is very broadly used for sizes for your clothes and shoes.

Other expressions include

신발 사이즈가 몇이에요?

신발 치수가 몇이에요?

You can replace '몇이예요?' with '어떻게 되세요?'

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  • I wonder if "치" can be used by itself? That would be pretty close to what I think I heard.
    – Leftium
    Sep 18, 2016 at 6:23
  • @Leftium No, it doesn't make any sense.
    – user7
    Sep 18, 2016 at 6:31
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The phrase I was looking for was just: "몇이에요?"

The ㅊ was promoted to the next syllable, making it sound like there was another word there. I guess the object (mm) is implied from the context.

Source: Native Korean friend. (Note: his first response was something like "신발 사이즈가 어떻게 되세요?")

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  • You can also use '얼마' instead of '몇' in this case: 신발 사이즈 얼마에요?
    – Jake
    Sep 24, 2016 at 8:47
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The explanation here in this post of 몇 is wrong. 몇 translates into "how much" but is reserved for a general numerical measure. Taking this into account, here are the most commonly used expressions.

몇 미리 신으세요? 미리 stands for millimeters, the standard unit of measurement for shoe size here in Korea, therefore in English translated literally would be "How many millimeters would you wear", evidently wrong in English but accepted in Korean

몇 신이세요? Identical as above, but 미리 isn't written explicitly but implied

발 사이즈 어떻게 되나요?

신발 사이즈 어떻게 되나요?

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  • Apologies for the edits. Jul 22, 2022 at 10:55

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