Faux Cyrillic

Common card · No. 292795

Faux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic (Russian: псевдокириллица, romanized: psevdokirillitsa), 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. 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" (which in Russian would be pronounced yaussiai). Other examples include the use of Ш ("sh") for W, Ц ("ts") for U, Я/Г ("ya"/"g") for R/vertically flipped L, Ф ("f") for O, Д ("d") for A, Б ("b"), Ь (soft sign), or Ъ (hard sign) for B/b, З ("z"), Э ("eh"), or Ё for E...

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