Well, since I seem to be getting a lot of hits from Russia lately, today I thought I would share an amusing fact. I'm sure most of you reading this are familiar with the former Soviet Union, or the U.S.S.R.(those of you reading from Russia might have heard of it, but know it by a slightly different acronym).

American audiences might have seen C.C.C.P. here and there, in fact there's even a gaming website using the name. I remember in junior high a friend of mine excitedly insisting we should all call the former Soviet Union the C.C.C.P.

And the funny thing is, reading this in text, I can almost guarantee each and every one of you is reading that acronym wrong(except, again, those of you who speak the right language), its actually the S.S.S.R..





Wait, what?

The Russian language uses an alphabet called Cyrillic, which looks a lot like English(because both are derived from Latin) and uses many similar characters. However, these characters do not always mean the same thing.

Russian has, for example, no S. Well they do, it just looks like a C but makes the S sound as in Cent. Or Coviet. American C sounds are made with something that looks like a K and is called a Ka. Russian is mostly phonetic, so their spelling bees aren't nearly as challenging.

That thing that looks like a P is actually an Er, and makes all the R sounds you know and love. Why does it look like a P? I have no idea, I just know its an R, and that thing which looks like a backwards R is actually a a Ya and makes some Y sounds. I can no longer look at a Toys'R'Us sign without thinking "Toys'Ya'Us".

Source: two years of Russian in high school.

This concludes todays lesson, if any of you former Soviets would like to step in and correct me, feel free to do so in the comments section.