In Japanese, "sea" is 海 (umi). It is a noun pronounced "oo-mee".
Listen to the pronunciation:
海 is written in kanji. Romanised as umi, it sounds roughly like "oo-mee" to an English ear.
海で泳ぐのが大好きです。
Umi de oyogu no ga daisuki desu.
I love swimming in the sea.
Umi (海) means sea or ocean. Japan is an island nation surrounded by sea, and the sea plays a central role in its culture, cuisine, and history.
Curated by Jack Ratcliffe
Practice 海 and hundreds more Japanese words in the game.
Buy on Steam海 is romanised as umi. Say it roughly like "oo-mee" in English. Each Japanese syllable has even weight, so keep the rhythm steady.
海 is a neutral, everyday word that works in both casual and polite speech. The level of formality comes from the sentence structure around it, not from the word itself.
海 is written using kanji. Kanji characters carry the core meaning; any hiragana or katakana that follow show grammatical endings.
This word is part of the vocabulary taught in the Japanese language learning game Noun Town, where words are introduced through play rather than memorisation.
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