Since I need to know specifically to phrases, words, typography and accents of Russians speaking English, I have researched extensively Runglish (the linguistic merging of English and Russian), the dialect of Russian English, and the fake mixture of the Cyrillic font as an English font.
I also plan to take Russian in college to add to my research, so that I can write the script to Novikof accurately and cleverly. I want the phrases I write for my characters to be historically and culturally accurate as well as the accents I direct my actors to use. I can also hire a dialect coach for this end, but being able to tweak actors pronunciation on set myself would lower the hours and cost of the dialect coach.
Linguistic Study of Runglish:
Runglish has been influenced by the American and British use of English, taking our filler words like “um” and “er.” It also took parts of American and British English’s lexis such as “so,” “and,” “but,” and other simple conjunctions that are so fundamental to English. Certain phrases using American and British English’s syntax have influenced Runglish like “fun to remember” and “as a human being is more than life itself.” This places an adverb before the infinitive verb it is modifying and a noun followed by a state of being verb and an adjective and a noun. According to NFKRZ, the YouTuber commenting on the video of Runglish, this is not Russian syntax, so clearly there is English influence. Speakers of Runglish often have Russian accents, as they get it by immigrating to an English-speaking location and slowly gain parts of the English lexis. There are many sounds, like the guttural character in Cyrillic “X” that are not found in English but Runglish speakers still use when saying English words.
Runglish fits in with Phase 1 of Sociolinguistic Conditions (“contact between STL and IDG serve utilitarian purposes, each group continues to communicate within their confines, and marginal bilingualism develops”). I did not rate them as in any higher phase because the heavily accented English interspersed with Russian is cannot constitute full bilingualism. The speakers also did come from Russia and only speaking Russia, so picking up a few words here and there is also marginal bilingualism but is still marginally as they can go as far as use some English syntaxes, even if not fully. The Russians use English when they need to in their new setting for utilitarian purposes but often sticks to Russian within their families or in Russian communities in the U.S., like in New York (little Russia).
Russian English:
People who live in Moscow (Mockba in Russian) are Moscovites and have a more "educated" stereotype from their speech.
Sho - that (Ukranian, or Russian but uneducated, like the Southern accent in US, seen as redneck like from the village, backwoods-y)
Shto - that (Russian, Moscovites)
A lot of Hollywood speakers use this style, hard Ukrainian accent. This means that the characters I cast for the big budget version of Novikof will need to refrain from any Southern Russian accents when speaking, as they are all supposed to be from the big city, Moscow area.
Text in this Power Point:
Russian English
The More Modern History of Russian English (Overview)
•Since Russia was very isolationist before the 20th century
•most of its population was in small peasant villages
•the country is geographically so large that many, especially when the country was poor and there wasn’t much access to travel
•hardly anyone at all spoke English.
The History of Russian English
1876: The Christian Bible was fully translated into Russian
Biblical names, were somewhat altered (transliterated) in the Russian version, but much of the names remained and affected the Russian language so much that there were new baby naming trends.
(ex- Zavid, Elyashiv, and Abram)
“King George” became “Georg” and “King James” became “Iakov”.
1920s: Lenin’s Soviet Tourism (aka Proletarian Tourism)
In order to educate about communism during vacation, Soviets were allowed both “active tourism” and “productive rest.” The All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, VOKS, was formed for foreign visitors, touring the country’s industrial plants, dams, and factories. The mix between the two groups brought Russian words about industry and the factors of production.
Mid 1950s - Mid 1980s: Porous Empire: Foreign Visitors and the Post Stalin Soviet State (during Novikof)
Millions of foreigners visited the USSR between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s including Americans. The workers were expected to be watched, but not watch them. The foreigners were meant, again, to believe that the USSR was a “worker’s paradise” and that the laborers couldn’t be bothered to stop their work. Many did, however, and when found, were punished by the Soviet police. The Russians adopted some popular vacation words first though.
Starting in the 1960s:
The English “h” (breathy) was pronounced with the fricative “g” (sonorous). This came from the Northern Russians (ex- Muscovites) made fun of those who do this. The accent is more Ukrainian and what the Americans would call “redneck.” When Nikita Khrushchev came to power, since he came from the South, he made the accent look better.
1953-1964:
American Media gives Russia many names and terms.
The worldwide, American-made anti-war era of the 60s gave Russia (through the media exploding from the space race) terms like “hippie,” and ”Jimi Hendrix.”
Modern English Video Games:
Video games that are popular worldwide are mostly from America, or are at
least English, with English voice acting. They also appeal to younger generations, and according to our studies in child language acquisition, the younger one learns a language, the more likely they are to retain it.
Video game streaming perpetuates profanity, known as “raging.” Young Russians playing with others around the world online pick up on this language.
Adaptation and Incorporation of Russian in Russian English
•The Russian Language leans toward more sonorous sounds, so voiced consonants instead of breathy sounds.
•The hard “r” in American Englishes and the hard “g” sounds show up (even more than in American English) in Russian English often.
Kachru's Circle Model
These categorizations are based on a country’s types of spread, patterns of acquisition, range of functional domains, and societal penetration of the language.
Russia is placed the Expanding Circle.
In Russia, English has no administrative status, but its recognized as a lingua franca and is often taught as a foreign language in schools.
Most of Russian culture taken place outside of English circles, more propagated by the high level of involvement of the government, whose language is entirely Russian.
Russia is “norm-dependent.” It must rely on native-English-speaking countries for their norms.
“th” and “i” Pronunciations
•“Th” in “think” is pronounced “s.” For example, “I think it’s really nice,” would be “I sink it’s really nice.”
•“Th” in “this” can be pronounced “d,” like “dis.”
•“Th” in “this” can also be pronounced “z.”
More Key Pronunciations
The short i in ”this” is pronounced “ee” For example, “This is supposed to,” is “zeece is supposed to.”
•Rolling their ”r”s. “Great” becomes “g(rolled r)eat.” The American “r” is a “hard r.”
•The tongue tip for “d”s and “t”s is lighter and farther back in the mouth for American English speakers that it is for Russian English speakers. They would pronounce “Too Day” with very dental sounds and a slight pause between each syllable, but Americans are much lazier and merge the syllables for “tahday.” Overall, Russian English is much less “lazy,” carefully pronouncing their “t”s and “d”s.
•Russian English also includes “goose fronting,” meaning when saying ”today,” they really pronounce the “oo” sound. Some American Englishes do not, such as Southern English (pronounced as a “back vowel,” fully in the back of the mouth with the lip open, but not so rounded as goose fronting.)
Key Pronunciations Due to Spelling
•Because of spelling, words like “police,” while Americans would say “pohleese,” Russian English speakers would say “polis.”
•“H” in “help” is pronounced with as a “guttural,” meaning from the throat, because it is transliterated from the “x” in Cyrillic to English. (Found in Khabarovsk), but its English form comes from the sound in the English word “loch.”
•Transliteration: a swapping of letters when changing words from one alphabet system to another.
•Most typically though, the “h” in “help” or “Hamlet” (as it doesn’t exist in Russian) is pronounced “g,” so ”Harry Potter” is then “Garry Potter” and “Hitler” is “Gitler.”
Notice:
•“t”s in “tickled” are very pronounced, dental, and the tongue hits at the front of the mouth, right on the back of the teeth.
•“th” in “that” is pronounced “dat.”
•“i” in “it” is pronounced “eet.”
•“h” is pronounced in the back of the throat as a guttural. This is due to the transliteration issues from the English Latin alphabet to the Cyrillic alphabet.
•“r” in “brought” is rolled.
•“s” in ”his” is pronounced “z.”
•“i” in “police” is pronounced “i,” like “polis” as opposed to “poleece”
"Latryllic":
I created this term as a blend between "Latin" (as in the Latin alphabet) and "Cyrillic" (the Russian alphabet).
(Content and some quotes from research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHDoJiFV2hU&t=305s)
Faux Cyrillic or pseudo Russian text is all over the internet, showing setting and culture, but also ingratiating English so English-reading audiences can understand it. This upsets many Russians, (like Roman from NFKRZ) and is inauthentic, but since it does effectively achieve its goal and my audience is English-speaking, I will use it for the ending graphic text over the automatic sliding doors at the Alvin Sherman library to show the movie's title.
People use characters from the Russian alphabet in order to type latin words. In the "Borat" example, the "A" looking letter is actually pronounced "D," so it should really be read "Bordt." The backwards "R" in Cyrillic is actually the word "ja," so backwards "R"ussia is actually pronounced "ja-ussia." Many Russian YouTubers use this method, however, because their audience is English-reading and they expect it. It can be done tastefully if not excessively, so using this only for my original title graphic (and not the book cover or my logo-the other text in the opening) is acceptable.
When I watched the Bourne Identity for further research on spycraft and direction, I saw this shot:
The Latin version of his name is written on the passport as "Foma Kiniaev," but in Cyrillic, the name is written as "Aschef Lshtshfum," so I will have to be sure not to use this on any key plot-furthering documents that are actually important to get correct, like one of the main characters passports. I can apply this to Novikof when Vladimir Vetrov has offical spy documents to send to Reagan. The documents should really be written in Cyrillic if they are not imporant for the audience to read (or are written in correct Cyrillic, but there are permanent subtitles explaining what they mean, often done when a few lines are said in a movie meant for an English-speaking audience in a different language, for example the Bourne Identity:
)I should, however, be cognizant of this issue to an extent, as Cyrillic-reading audiences will be upset or not enjoy the movie as much as if the text was accurate. There are also different, added characters to other languages written in Cyrillic, (like Serbian with this symbol:
, Ukrainian with this symbol:
) so I have to be sure I use only the symbols from Russian for the movie.
Some of the symbols in Cyrillic are silent, so this "Latryllic" word:
, since the character that looks like "b" is actually silent and the character that looks like "A" is pronounced "D" is actually pronounced just "D." I need to make sure that I at least don't use any silent characters in my original graphic for Novikof's main title. 
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