字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

sea, ocean

On’yomi カイ
Kun’yomi うみ
Nanori あ、あま、うな、うん、え、か、た、ひろ、ひろし、ぶ、まち、まま、み、め、わたる

Origin

The character 海 combines water (the left-side component 氵, which classifies this as a word about liquids) with the sound component 毎 on the right, which hints at the pronunciation. The water radical makes sense because the sea is, fundamentally, a large body of water. The sound component doesn't tell you what the sea is—it just guides you toward how to say the word. Together, these parts create a character that visually reminds you of water while phonetically anchoring the pronunciation to readers and learners.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

海 9 strokes

Components

  • 氵 radical left
  • 毎 sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 沿海 えんかい sea along the coast; coastal waters
  • 海域 かいいき area of sea; waters
  • 海運 かいうん maritime transport; shipping
  • 海外 かいがい foreign; abroad
  • 海岸 かいがん seashore; coast
  • 海峡 かいきょう channel (e.g. between two land masses); strait
  • 海軍 かいぐん navy; naval force
  • 海溝 かいこう oceanic trench; deep-sea trench

Related kanji

Same sound component 毎
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
9
Kangxi radical
85
Grade
Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#200 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 3
Unicode
U+06D77