Interesting civil defence helmet

[Geoff Ward]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to share a Civil Defense helmet I just picked up.Normally I would have passed on it but the Kanji looked interesting.Perhaps someone can help with the translation.Its a shame that the liner is not complete however,at $25.00 I wont cry.

[GHP]

?兵會

? Hei Kai

? Soldier Association -- can't get a google hit from the kanji. We'll have to hope that Nick Komiya reads this and enlightenes us!

I can't find the first kanji .... I thought it might be nonstandard for 賛 "san" (value/praise) or 賞 "ki" (value/honor) -- either which would still sound good; but I am yet unconvinced.

--Guy

[imperialjapan]

Well, I am not Nick Komiya, but I will give it a shot.
Although I cannot find the exact kanji, it resembles 貴 (ki), which can mean 'you' but also 'noble.' The meaning would make sense in this 3-kanji compound (Noble Soldier Association). However, that being said, the kanji as written is slightly different in the middle horizontal stroke.

The person wrote it with authority (and in a nice hand) so it doesn't seem like he would have made an error. But I cannot find this kanji even in my 'obscure and old kanji' book.

[Jareth]

Nice helmet! these are great when they have kanji that can ID who used them

[imperialjapan]

Is it possible this is Chinese? I don't read that language very well and don't really have a source for the characters.

[GHP]

.... it resembles 貴 (ki), which can mean 'you' but also 'noble.' The meaning would make sense in this 3-kanji compound (Noble Soldier Association). However, that being said, the kanji as written is slightly different in the middle horizontal stroke. ...

Yeah ... I originally posted that exact kanji until I realized it was not the "yane/roof" radical. I agree it makes sense as "Noble Soldier Association."

--Guy

[GHP]

Okay ..... I broke down and finally asked my two-legged dictionary: my wife the translator. She says the mysterious kanji is 費 [hi=cost]... and when I looked at it again ..... I see it!

Additionally, she says it doesn't make sense reading it from right to left; it should be read from LEFT to right 會兵費 ["kai hei hi"] ... a "native speaker feeling" she said.... though, it still makes no sense to her as 會兵費 or 費兵會 Must be a technical term -- at least she's not familiar with it.

According to the dictionary, 医療費 i-ryou-hi = medical expenses; so perhaps 會兵費 means Association soldier costs? Still ... it makes no sense to me! And ....
會費 "kaihi" is membership fee... so 會兵費 would be "membership fee with a soldier in the middle." (okay, lame joke.)

NICK Help again, s'il vous plait!

--Guy

[imperialjapan]

Guy, with all due respects to your wife, I am sure it is read from the right. (I hate to bring wives into the discussion.) The two kanji you posited and the one your wife did (sorry again for bringing in a third party) cannot be right. If I am proven wrong, of course I will apologize, but the kanji I suggested is the best match--unless this is Chinese language rather than Japanese.

[Nick Komiya]

To a native reader, it's a no-brainer that the first kanji is 費. Is it the presence of the incorrect space/gap in the top component that had thrown the non-natives? And right to left is how it is read. That much is certain, but the meaning is not, as literally it means "association for expending soldiers".
Whatever the nature of the group, it was apparently minor enough to leave no record of itself nor their strange logic for naming itself. 　

[GHP]

...Is it the presence of the incorrect space/gap in the top component that had thrown the non-natives?

その通り! Exactly! Actually, that kanji was one of the results I found, but disregarded because I didn't recognize the 弗. Due to the space/gap, I was incorrectly concentrating on what I thought was a "beki hen" 冖

"association for expending soldiers".

That's probably why it didn't make sense to her. Urrkkk!

--Guy

[imperialjapan]

There you go! We non-native readers still get stumped by no-brainers. I guess that is how Japanese students of English feel when they stumble upon yet another idiom.

Thanks again for your help, Nick, and your efforts, Guy (wife included)!

[GHP]

I guess that is how Japanese students of English feel when they stumble upon yet another idiom.

HEY! Who you calling an idiom?

Yah, I know what you mean.

--Guy

[Nick Komiya]

This is an interesting example of how our minds go about pattern recognition. I suppose non-natives look at kanji through its components, the way they break it down in a kanji dictionary, whereas native readers look at the general silhouette/profile. So I instinctively look at how tall, how squat, center of gravity, how it leans or sits. In writing kanji, there are no set ratios for lengths of the strokes, etc, so you can write it chubby or skinny, but there is a kind of Golden Profile that makes each kanji look its best in calligraphy. The writer in this case is gifted enough to follow those proportions and it is this that makes it a no-brainer to natives. Japanese students of English find "hearing comprehension" challenging, because they need to pick up all the words to understand, but simply cannot process the information at the normal speed of a conversation, with words seeming to flash by like machine gun fire. Native speakers do not listen and process someone's spoken words word by word. All a question of linguistic muscle memory that comes with practice.

[GHP]

Nick,

That was an excellent synopsis of recognition-learning.

Are you engaged in T&I, or are you just a gifted linguist? And ... how does it come that you are in Germany? [Begging the question: do you speak German as well?] You are obviously a native-speaker of English; do you have two A-languages? Or is your B-language sooooooo strong?

I've met only one other Japanese citizen who was a true bilingual when I was in Monterey -- she had graduate-level written/spoken English & Japanese. I think her father was a diplomat.

Totally impressed!
--Guy

[Nick Komiya]

English and Japanese are both like mother tongues to me, and German is a fairly recent addition, but I do OK. All my favorite books that I would normally have read in English, I now read in German to shift my "thinking language" to German as much as possible. All female members of my family speak 4 languages, so I am still one behind. My daughter speaks English, French and German like a native and recently Japanese. I came to Germany from Canada in 2003 because of my work in F1 Racing and though I am sort of semi-retired, I am stuck here because of the Visa. I have lived in Japan, USA, Canada and Germany, so I did have use for the languages in the same way I needed the local currency. Even my grandfathers had been educated in Germany and the USA, my great grand dad in England, so language has been somehow a traditional prerequisite in the family.