Faux Cyrillic

Faux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic, pseudo-Russian or faux Russian typography is the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text, usually to evoke the Soviet Union or Russia, though it may be used in other contexts as well. It is a common Western trope used in book covers, film titles, comic book lettering, artwork for computer games, or product packaging which are set in or wish to evoke Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, or Russia. A typeface designed to emulate Cyrillic is classed as a mimicry typeface.

A faux Russian T-shirt print reads "ШЗ́ДЯ" (WEAR). A Russian-speaker would read this as "shzdya", a word that does not exist in the language. Moreover, the accent over the letter З never occurs in Russian, as it is a consonant, but letter З́ exist in Montenegrin language.

Letters are substituted regardless of phonetic matching. For example, R and N in RUSSIAN may be replaced with Cyrillic Я ("ya") and И ("i") to form the faux-cyrillic "ЯUSSIAИ" (yaussiai). Other examples include the use of Ш for W, Ц for U, Я/Г for R/backwards and upside-down L, Ф for O, Д for A, Б, Ь, or Ъ for B/b, З, Э, or Ё for E, Ч or У for Y. Outside the Russian alphabet, Џ (from Serbian) can act as a substitute for U, Ғ (from Turkic languages) for F, Ә (from Turkic languages, Abkhaz, Dungan, Itelmen, Kalmyk and Kurdish) or Є (from Ukrainian) for E, Ө (from Turkic, Mongolic and Uralic languages) for O, Һ (from Turkic and Mongolic languages and Kildin Sámi) for H, and Ћ (Serbian) for Th. A reversed ☭ (written as ☭) is also sometimes used for G. A common substitution is $ for S. Further variants include an inverted or rotated K (ꓘ), which is not used in any alphabet except Fraser.

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. Most Cyrillic letter-forms were derived from the Greek alphabet in the 9th century, but the modern forms have more closely resembled those in the Latin alphabet since Peter the Great's civil script reform of 1708.

Many versions of Tetris, including those by Atari/Tengen and Spectrum Holobyte, used faux Cyrillic to spell the name as TETЯIS (tetyais) to emphasize the game's Russian origins. The mockumentary film Borat used faux Cyrillic to stylize its title as BORДT (Bordt, in Russian the name would be spelt БОРАТ). Another example is American ammunition manufacturer Red Army Standard Ammunition, which is stylized as "RЭD АRMY STAИDARD".

Characters

Cyrillic letter	Latin look-alikes	Actual pronunciation
Б	B, G, S, numeral 5, numeral 6	/b/ as in boy
В	B, ß	/v/ as in vault, /w/ as in wind (Ukrainian)
Г	T, lowercase r, vertically mirrored L	/ɡ/ as in goat, [ɦ]~[ɣ] similar to hill (Belarusian, Ukrainian)
Д	A, O	/d/ as in door
Ж	X, asterisk, backwards and forwards K	/ʐ/ similar to treasure
З	E, numeral 3	/z/ as in zoo
И	backwards N	/i/ as in tree or [ɪ] as in him (Ukrainian)
Й	N, Ñ, Ň	/j/ as in you
К	K	/k/ as in car
Л	A, N, JI, J	/l/ as in love or [ɫ] as in coal
Н	H	/n/ as in nose
П	N, H, lowercase n, lowercase h	/p/ as in spot
Р	P	/r/ as in rope (trilled)
С	C	/s/ as in soup
У	lowercase Y	/u/ as in rule
Ф	I, O, Q, Ø, numeral 0	/f/ as in fawn
Х	X	/x/ as in Scottish English loch
Ц	U, vertically flipped L connected	/ts/ as in cats
Ч	Y, U, numeral 4	/tɕ/ similar to check
Ш	W, rotated E, upside down M	/ʂ/ similar to shrunk
Щ	W, rotated E, vertically flipped L connected	/ɕː/ similar to wish sheep (Russian), /ʃtʃ/ as in fresh cheese (Ukrainian and Rusyn), /ʃt/ as in schtick (Bulgarian)
Ы	bI, vertically flipped P, letter L, numeral 61	/ɨ/ similar to roses in some dialects
Ь	lowercase b, vertically flipped P	indicates the palatalization of the previous consonant, as in union as opposed to unite
Э	E, backwards C, numeral 3	/ɛ/ as in echo
Ю	IO, I-O, numeral 10	/ju/ as in you
Я	backwards R	/ja/ as in yard

The letters А, В, Е, Ѕ*, І*, Ј*, К, М, Н, О, Р, С, Т, Ү*, У, Ғ*, Ѵ*, and Х (*used in other Cyrillic alphabets or from Church Slavonic) are strongly homoglyphic or related to Latin letters, depending on intended sound values to the point that their substitution may not be noticed, unlike those listed above.

See also

• Homoglyph
• IDN homograph attack
• Foreign branding
• Heavy metal umlaut for a similar practice in the field of heavy metal
• Leet for a similar manner of replacing Latin letters with other glyphs that resemble them
• Mimicry/Ethnic Typefaces
• Samples of simulation typefaces
• Transformation of text
• UL Recognized Mark (left-italic ЯU)

External links

• The Backwards R - Explains in greater detail with examples.
• ҒДԞЄ ЯЦSSЇДИ GЄЙЭЯДҐФЯ - A Faux Cyrillic generator that uses lookalikes to replace Latin letters.