27

I have this comic book in Russian that uses characters I don't know from my Russian learning materials.

Please see my image. There are:

  • small m
  • и with line on top
  • g
  • mirrored s

Which 'standard' characters do they represent?

enter image description here

4
  • 5
    Out of curiousity, how did you never encounter й? Jun 25, 2018 at 5:51
  • Here is a related/duplicate question with an extensive answer: russian.stackexchange.com/a/13538/4903
    – Vitaly
    Jun 25, 2018 at 13:29
  • 1
    @Infiltrator i believe he did encounter й but haven't encountered specifically its cursive glyph й Jun 25, 2018 at 16:00
  • 2
    @БаянКупи-ка, да и может быть. But he did correctly identify it as "и with line on top", so I am just curious why he did not equate that with й if he had encountered it already. Jun 25, 2018 at 22:48

4 Answers 4

42

-small m = т

-и with line on top = й

-g = д

-mirrored s = г

These are handwriting-style characters, but some of them (m, -и with line on top and mirrored s in particular) are also used in the italicized versions of some Russian fonts like Arial and Times New Roman, to name a couple.

3
  • 9
    Depending on your font setup, you may see them in context here: который, куда, глава. If you don’t get those forms of the characters, copy and paste it into somewhere you can edit the font/style, and set it to italic Times New Roman (or most other serif fonts). They’re very traditional alternative forms of the characters, both for handwriting and italic printed text.
    – PLL
    Jun 23, 2018 at 14:25
  • 3
    @PLL interestingly, here in your example we can see the third variation of the look of д: like curved Greek small delta, similar to partial derivative sign. This seems to be a more common shape for in computer fonts.
    – Ruslan
    Jun 24, 2018 at 6:50
  • you mean this? russian.stackexchange.com/questions/2919/… :-D
    – Arioch
    Jun 25, 2018 at 12:47
29

Those are cursive forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cursive

The letters you were surprised by are, in order listed, Тт Йй Дд Гг.

9

In some fonts you might also encounter 'mirrored 6' which is 'small д'.

7

Nobody posted these letters italicized yet, so here you go:

  • Тт Тт
  • Йй Йй
  • Дд Дд
  • Гг Гг

Examine this answer's markdown by clicking "edit" to make sure I didn't trick you :ь

1

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.