Faux Cyrillic

Faux Russian T-shirt print "Ш3ДЯ" (WEAR). A Russian-speaker would read this as "shzdya", a word which does not occur in the language.

Faux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic, pseudo-Russian^[1] or faux Russian typography is the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text to evoke the Soviet Union or Russia, regardless of whether the letters are phonetic matches. For example, R and N in RUSSIAN may be replaced by Cyrillic Я and И, giving "ЯUSSIAИ". Other examples include Ш for W, Ц for U, Я and Г for r, Ф for O, Д for A, Б or Ь or Ъ for B, 3 or Э or Ё for E, ☭ for G, Ч and У for Y.

This is a common Western trope used in book covers, film titles, comic book lettering, artwork for computer games, or product packaging^[2][3] which are set in or wish to evoke Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, or the Russian Federation. An early example was the logo for Norman Jewison's film The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.

This effect is usually restricted to text set in all caps, because Cyrillic letter-forms do not match well with lower case Latin letters. In Cyrillic typography, most upright lower case letters resemble smaller upper case letters, unlike the more distinctive forms of Latin-alphabet type. Cursive Cyrillic upper and lower case letters are more differentiated. Cyrillic letter-forms are originally derived from tenth-century Greek manuscript, but the modern forms more closely resemble Latin since Peter the Great's civil script reform of 1708.

Characters

Cyrillic letter	Latin look-alike	Actual pronunciation
Б	B, G, S	/b/ as in "boy"
Г	r, T, F?	/ɡ/ as in "goat"
Д	A	/d/ as in "day"
Є*	E, C?	/je/ as in "yes"
Ж	X, K	/ʐ/ similar to "treasure"
З	E, 3	/z/ as in "zoo"
И	N	/i/ as in "machine" or /i/ as in "tin"
Л	J, JI	/l/ as in "love"
П	n	/p/ as in "pond"
У	Y	/u/ as in "rule"
Ф	O	/f/ as in "fox"
Ц	U	/ts/ as in "cats"
Ч	Y	/tɕ/ similar to "check"
Ш, Щ	W	/ʂ/ similar to "shrunk"
Ы	bl	/ɨ/ similar to "roses" in some dialects
Ь	b	indicates the palatalization of the previous consonant as in "union" as opposed to "unite"
Э	E	/ɛ/ as in "echo"
Ю	IO	/ju/ as in "you"
Я	R	/ja/ as in "yard"

The letters А, В, Е, Ѕ*, І*, Ј*, К, М, Н, О, Р, С, Т, Ү*, Ғ*, Ѵ*, and Х are strongly homoglyphic to Latin letters and, in the event compatibility issues arise, can be used with faux Cyrillic letters in lieu of their Latin counterparts. In addition, C may be replaced by Archaic Ҁ. (Letters with a *, however, are not in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.)

Notes and references

1. ^ Jen Chen, "Sweater Hip Check", The Pitch (Kansas City), February 15, 2007 online
2. ^ "American Perceptions of Vodka Shaken, Not Stirred: An Analysis of the Importance of Vodka’s Foreign Branding Cues and Country-of-Origin Information", Jon Kurland, October 26, 2004 full text
3. ^ Englis, Basil G. (1994). Global and Multinational Advertising. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. p. 123. ISBN 0805813950. 

External links

• Fake Cyrillic Generator – Converts Latin text to faux Cyrillic.