Faux Cyrillic
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Graphic designers sometimes employ faux Cyrillic typography to give a Soviet or Russian feel to text, by replacing Latin letters with Cyrillic letters resembling them in appearance. A simple way to accomplish this is to replace capital letters R and N with Cyrillic Я and И, for some "Яussiaи flavor". Other examples include Ш for W, Ц for U, Г for r, Ф for O, Д for A, and Ч or У for Y.
This effect is usually restricted to text set in all caps, because Cyrillic letter-forms don't match well with lower case Latin letters.[1]
This is a common Western trope used in book covers, film titles, comic book lettering, and artwork for computer games which are set in the Soviet Union or Russian Federation. An early example was the logo for Norman Jewison's film The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming; more are listed below.
Not all examples of typography with mirror-imaged Latin characters are Faux Cyrillic. For example, Toys R Us and Korn use a crude backwards letter R, in the former to embody childlike innocence, in the latter to evoke an ironically grim crudeness. The "NIN" wordmark of Nine Inch Nails uses a backwards N to create a formalistic symmetry.
The Cyrillic characters below are not pronounced the same way as their Roman lookalikes:
| Cyrillic letter | Latin look-alike | Actual Russian pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Я | R | /ja/ as in "yard" |
| И | N | /i/ as in "eat" |
| Ш | W | /ʃ/ as in "ship" |
| Ц | U | /ʦ/ as in "cats" |
| Ф | O | /f/ as in "fox" |
| Д | A | /d/ as in "day" |
| Ч | Y | /ʧ/ as in "check" |
| У | Y | /u/ as in "shoot" |
[edit] Examples of faux Cyrillic
- The videogame TETЯIS
- APPAЯATCHIK, a fanzine.
- Cover artwork for Paul McCartney's album CHOBA B CCCP ("PAUL McCARTИEЧ")
- LЭИIИGЯAD COWBOYS, a Finnish, but "fake Russian" band, spelled with varying amounts of faux Cyrillic.
- Poster art in the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The title of the film on movie posters is spelled BORДT. The Д resembles the capital letter "A" although in reality, Д makes a "D" sound.
- Further information: List of examples of faux Cyrillic typography
[edit] Notes
- ^ 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.
[edit] See also
- Foreign branding
- Heavy metal umlaut for a similar practice in the field of heavy metal
- Greek sigmas (Σ) can be employed as the capital Roman E, for instance in the RCA brand name Erato was written Σrato in the logo.
- Volapük encoding, an informal rendering of Cyrillic text over Latin-alphabet ASCII.
- Engrish
- Cyrillic
