The Latin alphabet in a Cyrillic accent

Originally written for All Horses are the Same Colour published by EKA GD MA in 2022

The Estonian language uses the Latin alphabet. It is the official language of Estonia. After Estonia was invaded and occupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of the Estonian language effectively changed, becoming one of the two official languages, next to Russian. Attempts were made by Russian authorities to suppress the prevalence of Estonian language. In the 1970s, teaching and learning Estonian by Russian-speakers was considered unnecessary by Soviet authorities. After Estonia had regained its independence in 1991, the Estonian language ultimately endured and many of the remnant ethnic Russians have adopted the Estonian language. This creates a cross-pollination of people and culture as ethnic Russians, who first learned to write in Cyrillic had to adapt to writing with the Latin alphabet.

Estonia is a country historically subject to life under foreign rule. Between the second half of the 19th century and before the second World War, Estonians found a need to develop their national identity and this need or point in the nation’s history is their national awakening. Whether it’s the acquisition of true Estonian national characteristics like language, national symbols or traditions or the regard of what stands out as their own between the many influences of Danish, Swedish, German and Russian rules, the foundation was laid on which the Estonian national identity of today lies upon. The tradition of the Estonian Song Celebration was born along with Estonian national awakening and has been held every five years since 1869. Choirs sing patriotic Estonian songs to large audiences and celebrate their existence with pride in their nation’s heritage. The song festival’s repertoire has mainly consisted of songs in Estonian, with the exception of the period during the Soviet Union, when it was mandatory to sing the anthems of the Soviet Union, the anthem of the Estonian SSR and the Internationale. As long as Estonians have developed their national identity, Russian powers have simultaneously tried to culturally assimilate or russify Estonian culture for more than once, already in the mid-19th century and during the occupation by the Soviet Union, forcing Estonians to abandon their culture and language in favor of Russian culture. Russification stunted the growth of Estonia, which in addition to the mass deportations of Estonians to Siberia, made the Soviet period one of the most tragic points in Estonia’s history. After Estonia’s regained its independence in 1991, a lot of work in order to integrate ethnic Russians into Estonian society remains undone. Russians have become a part of Estonia after the dissolution of Soviet Union, whose nationality holds within itself the tragedy of the past. Estonian Song Celebrations continue to be held every five years, but culturally segregates a large chunk of the country’s population, as songs are sung in Estonian and the celebration is held in honor of having overcome their russified past. It would be unthinkable to sing a song in Russian when the whole festival is at this point precisely about not singing in Russian. Estonian politician Kristina Kallas claimed in an interview to Sirp magazine that in 2016 the (at the time) latest integration monitoring suggests that "young Estonian-Russians trust the Estonian state as much as Estonian young people". Question is whether Estonia as a nation is able to trust ethnic Russians. Will they continue to exist in the margins or is there a possibility for the unification of people, who, despite ethnic dissimilarities, have ultimately formed a shared history. A large number of Russians were sent by the Soviet Union to Estonia to industrialize the country and house the newly nationalized facets of government and society. Now in the 21st century 30% of Estonia’s population consists of ethnic Russians, whose own identity lies somewhere between two extremes – the national pride of Estonia and the occupation of the Soviet Union.

My great grandparents and their children were born in Krasnodar, which is situated in Southern Russia. Over the course of 20th century, much of my family moved from Krasnodar to villages and cities in Eastern Estonia and eventually to Tallinn. My grandparents arrived voluntarily in the 1960’s in search of greener pastures. My granduncle Aleksander, who remembers the time before having moved to Estonia, recalls our family holding Estonia in high regard, comparing the small country to a land from a fairy tale. He claimed that there was little to no "integration to Estonia" required. By listening to musicians like Georg Ots and Anne Veski and watching television programming like Tantsusaal already while still living in Russia, an initial integration into Estonia’s culture had already begun before having moved there, as the qualities of the language and examples of cultural expression had already created a sense of familiarity in the family. Later in the 1990’s when my brother, who was born and raised in Estonia, was taken to his first day to an Estonian school, my grandmother Niina hesitated to speak Russian for she didn’t want the teachers to realize that my brother’s family originally came from Russia. There was a sense of embarrassment or shame in my grandmother, although she did speak Estonian by then for she had lived in the country for more than 30 years, her Russian accent would’ve created, in her eyes, an unnecessary connotation that she assumed will hinder her grandson’s reputation in school, preferring to suppress her Russian heritage and the shadow of the past to her future generations as well.

When I was younger there was always a thermos with hot food on the kitchen table after I came home after school and almost every time there was a letter under the thermos instructing me to eat lunch before I go on with my day. The letter was written by my grandmother and already then my subconsciousness noticed how her handwriting was quite different from how I was taught to write in elementary school, but at the time, I simply thought that's how older people write and that there’s nothing more to it. Now, more than a decade later, when I walk around the Baltic station market in Tallinn, I notice something familiar on the price tags of the products in the display cases and understand that the letters under my childhood thermos and the signs currently at the market are very similar.

In order for ethnic Russians, including then my family from Russia, to be able to live in Estonia as comfortably as possible, they had to learn to write in the Latin alphabet. This is generally not as challenging for Cyrillic writers as learning for example Arabic or Japanese scripts, as both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Greek alphabet, but fortunately for Cyrillic writers, it is possible to write much of the Latin alphabet in exactly the same way as Cyrillic as for them foreign signs such as "S" or "I" can be improvised. On the labels of the market, two different literary cultures meet, because here you can find forms reminiscent of grotesque letter forms and the features of Cyrillic handwriting. When writing uppercase letters in a calligraphic style, the diagonal leg of the letter R for instance is usually not straight, but falls from the upper belly of the R and curves down to the right. In Cyrillic, the lowercase letter "k" has a rising vertical that does not extend over the other lowercase letters and relaxes quietly under the x-height.

My grandmother and the other Russian-speaking Estonians working in the Baltic station market were taught to write the Cyrillic alphabet by hand first and that affects the way they write any other alphabet or script later, so that creates this Cyrillic aura around the next letters they subconsciously russify. This makes sense when compared with how a person speaks any other language with the accent of their first language, the amount of how much the mouth is opened, whether the muscles of the mouth are strengthened or loose and whether their speech is melodical or monotonous. The mouth tries to render another set of variables, but evidently pulls back to the form it was initially given. The individuality of the Baltic station market stall signage’s handwriting in my opinion symbolizes that the market salespeople are used to writing in Cyrillic, but in order to sell products to customers, who are (arguably) more likely to be Estonian, they have to write the names of the products in Estonian, but in doing so they improvise the lettering and spelling in their own way, sometimes maybe forgetting to make the vertical stem of the letter "k" taller or accidentally adding an extra consonant when a word is plural. Besides their oral language, their written voice also has a Russian accent. This phenomenon does not only lie in the handwriting of my grandmother and the market salespeople of Balti jaam, but anywhere in Estonia, where there are Russian-speaking citizens preparing visual communication by hand, the look of the Latin alphabet with a Cyrillic accent can be seen.

When I was first taught to write in Estonian, the spelling was in a calligraphic style, but it has unconsciously since deformed to an unattached simpler style. Russians are taught and usually continue to write in a calligraphic style, never having it become something too formal, because this formal writing is exactly their everyday handwriting manner. The intricacies and frills of say, the letter "б" (b in Cyrillic) or the letter "д" (d in Cyrillic), cannot be overly simplified for they would then start to cease to be the letter they suggest to be. Calligraphic handwriting is disappearing in the sense that it has become this formal or vain way of presenting information, so expressive in a way that it becomes more about the form and less about what is written. When a coffee shop orders the service of a calligrapher to write on their brick wall "drink, feel, live coffee" or something similar, it is most likely for the sake of having calligraphy on the wall, rather than it suggesting people to live by the order of the statement. The form of handwriting reflects the time we live in, and so decorative written words are no longer in everyday use. A modern person prefers to write letters apart because it is faster and more convenient. In addition, the letter written apart leaves a much more modern impression. It has become a new norm, with serifs at the ends of the stars radiating academicism, and simple combinations of circle and line exude more or less recognizable everydayness.

The handwriting on the market stalls emitted a kind of struggle to conform, where the features of their spelling could be criticized for their mistakes and inaccuracies, whereas the signage can be seen as a sincere trial for equal ground. Within this little example I view the representation of two language groups. Influenced by the Russian-Estonian market stall signs, I wondered what would happen if the signs could be used as the basis of a typeface. The idea wasn’t exactly to replicate the shapes the salespeople had drawn, but to analyze why the signs looked so different to what I was used to and could it be possible to design a typeface, where Latin and Cyrillic share more than usual. The premise was to have and cultivate as much overlap as possible. By talking about my background as something between two extremes and painting a clearer picture of the context in Estonia, I was wondering if I could draw the two extremes as close as possible to each other in order to facilitate a point of reunification and have more overlap and connection between the users of both scripts. The notion of there being two extremes would be apparent throughout. The earliest Cyrillic was based on Greek, augmented by ligatures and by letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for consonants not found in Greek. The Latin alphabet also has its roots in Greek, so with this I want to propose that the two alphabets once were one or came from the same source, divided and now meet again on the market stalls. One side has the market salesperson quickly writing up signs for each of the various products on sale, seemingly oblivious to whether they spelled them correctly regarding Estonian grammar and Latin letterforms, but on the other side, a plethora of examples of the mix of two cultures for careful assessment, presenting shapes to form a whole that represents an invitation to a different way of seeing and reading. The market signs stay at a specific local space, but the typeface would be put out to reach a wider audience.

The final outcome is a typeface aptly called Niina after my grandmother inspired by her being geographically and culturally situated in-between Estonia and Russia and her handwriting that subconsciously combines Latin and Cyrillic letter shapes, is ultimately translated into a typeface, which stands between legible and formal, conventional and experimental, Cyrillic and Latin. By shuffling letters in-between the two alphabets, it suggests the integration of Estonia’s different demographics and doesn’t sweep minority groups under the rug in favor of one true nationality. By taking inspiration from the market, I do not wish to appropriate external features of another culture to decorate my own, but rather with the typeface I want to approach both cultures equally and make space for each a chance to inform and instill. The market labels are a softened version of russified visual culture with the people once voluntarily or involuntarily positioned between the extremes of Estonia and Russia adapting to the conditions set by the shared histories of both demographics living in Estonia, lying somewhere in between and receiving influence from both sides.