Thursday 19 May 2011

Faux Cyrillic

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 effect is usually restricted to text set in all caps, because Cyrillic letter-forms do not match well with lower case Latin letters.

This 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 the 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.

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