::Faux Cyrillic


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Faux Russian T-shirt print "Ш3ДЯ" (WEAR). A Russian-speaker would read this as "shzdya", a word which does not occur in the language. Moreover, the accent over the letter З never occurs in Russian.

Faux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic, pseudo-Russian<ref>Jen Chen, "Sweater Hip Check", The Pitch (Kansas City), February 15, 2007 online</ref> or faux Russian typography is the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text to evoke the Soviet Union or Russia.

This is a common Western trope used in book covers, film titles, comic book lettering, artwork for computer games, or product packaging<ref>"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</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=book }}</ref> 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 and more recently the logo for Sacha Baron Cohen's film Borat. In the music industry, the Simple Minds album Empires and Dance and the Spandau Ballet album Journeys to Glory, both 1981, provide examples in the cover artwork (the former with reversed Rs and Ns yielding Я and И, the latter with Д and Ф replacing A and O, respectively).

Letters are substituted regardless of phonetic matching. 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/Г for R/r, Ф for O, Д for A, Б or Ь or Ъ for B/b, З or Э or Ё for E, Ч or У for Y. Outside the Russian alphabet, Џ (Serbian) can act as a substitute for U, Ғ (USSR Turkic languages) for F, Ә (USSR Turkic languages) or Є (Ukrainian) for E, Ө (USSR Turkic languages) for O, Һ (Some USSR Turkic languages) for H, Ћ (Serbian) for Th and the symbol for G.<ref>A reversed hammer and sickle is used for the word-finishing Gs on the poster for The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, as can be seen here. </ref>

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