Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "海" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 海 in Chinese?

海 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /xaɪ˨˩˦/. It means “sea.” hai, low and sagging, with a scraped h onto the wide diphthong of "eye".

hai, low and sagging, with a scraped h onto the wide diphthong of "eye".

海 /xaɪ˨˩˦/

hǎi

The neighbour decides. Compare 还 hái, a rising tone with identical segments, and 害 hài, a falling one — three common words built on the same syllable, separated purely by pitch direction. That crowded neighbourhood is why the dip has to be genuine rather than merely low-ish.

Listen: 海

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Sound it out

h- The air rasps past the soft palate rather than an open English breath. Without it the syllable begins on a bare vowel and sounds like the English word "I".

-ai Open right out on "ah" with the jaw genuinely down, closing toward "ee". The generous length is helpful for a dipping tone, which needs room to sink.

hǎi (dip) Low and heavy throughout, with the final lift appearing when the word ends a phrase. The long diphthong makes this one of the easier third tones to sustain honestly.

Hear it in a sentence

夏天我们去看海。

Xiàtiān wǒmen qù kàn hǎi.

In summer we go to the sea.

Listen: 夏天我们去看海。

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夏天我们去看海。 ends on hǎi, so the dipping tone can be fully realised with its final lift. Wǒ is protected by the toneless men and keeps its dip too. Before that, xià plunges, tiān holds level, qù and kàn both plunge. Three falls and two dips, with no conversions anywhere.

Where English speakers slip

The h vanishes for many learners, leaving "I". Add friction at the back of the mouth. On the tone side, the risk is producing something between a dip and a fall — and since hài is a real word, a half-hearted descent that starts high genuinely changes the meaning. Start low and stay low.