Meine Shirtgröße ist Medium.

Sentence Discussions German
#1
English Translation

My shirt size is medium.

Meine Hemdgröße ist mittel or
Meine Shirtgröße ist Medium. What do they say in Germany?

#2

Clothing sizes are usually regarded as proper names:
S = small
L = large
XL = extra large
etc.

But very often the sizes are just given by their spelling. So for size “M”, people would say “emm”, XL is pronounced “icks ell”, etc. I have never heard someone say “mittel”, and only rarely “Medium”.

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#3

This is one of the many occasions where Germans don’t translate the English word to German.

Like @pitti42 said, we say one of these:

  • Meine T-Shirtgröße ist M.
  • Ich habe/trage Größe M.

We alternatively say “Small/Medium/Large” but we seldom say “Klein/Mittel/Groß”.

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#4

Interesting and relevant comments but not what I wanted to clarify. Is “shirt” and “medium” more commonly usede rather than “Hemd” and “Mittel”?

#5

Regarding “Mittel” or “Medium”: As @pitti42 and I both already said, yes, “Medium” is more commonly used than “Mittel”.

With “Shirt”, it depends.

  • If you mean a shirt (the one with buttons), then we say “Hemd”.
  • If you mean a T-shirt (no buttons), we don’t translate that into German. We say “T-Shirt”.
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#6

Happy to clarify. In the UK if you refer to a “shirt” it will be understood it is a tailored shirt that you would normally weat with perhaps a business suit and perhaps a tie, It may have long or short sleeves. A T-shirt, no buttons and short sleeves, strictly casual wear. Then you have a “polo shirt” which could be loosely described as a T-shirt wuth a collar and and 2/3 buttons.Perhpas in Germany the German language zealots might like to refer it as "Polo-hemd?

#7

Left the English word, right how Germans refer to it:

  • shirt ↔ Hemd
  • T-shirt ↔ T-Shirt
  • polo shirt ↔ Polohemd
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