War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Complex, seemingly random passwords that only You can remember.

TL;DR: Use dictionaries of the languages other than English to generate your memorable passwords and passphrases. Store them, remember them in that language but use them (type) with English keyboard layout.

If you have a luxury of being professionally fluent in a language that doesn’t use the Latin Alphabet, then you can use this technique right out of the box.

In my case, it’s Russian, lets roll with it!

A very important prerequisite is professional fluency, I mentioned above: you need to know the standardized keyboard layout for that language. By knowing keyboard layout (having strong muscle memory of it), I mean you should be able to switch system language to e.g. Russian and type freely in Russian without looking at the keyboard (you should intuitively know the location of all Cyrillic letters on the keyboard, punctuation marks, language-specific keyboard modifiers). This can be achieved through deliberate practice, or you might already have this skill acquired naturally if that language is your native.

To generate a memorable passphrase and as an illustrative example, I’ll use a “physical dictionary”, I’ll open my pocket edition of the War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and pluck 4 random Russian words out of it:

Pocket edition of the War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Here they are:

стоял, щеткой, государь, по-немецки

Now lets camel-case these so they look like a password:

стоялЩеткойГосударьПо-немецки

We are almost done, now remember this password (I did while I was typing it 🙂, it translates into English as something similar to stood, with brush, lord, in German), and save it in your favorite password manager:

Cyrillic password in password manager

The final part is the key part: usage.

To use this password, switch back to the English keyboard layout and type this password as if you were typing it in Russian with Russian keyboard layout. Here’s the result:

cnjzkOtnrjqUjcelfhmGj-ytvtwrb

Looks quite random, doesn’t it? Now when your password leaks (not a matter of if but when), it will be perceived as randomly generated. And even if your password manager will get compromised, you’ll have this additional level of security which I’m sure, will puzzle many.

Depending on your threat vector, and password requirements, you might want to visually “randomize” it even further. A simple strategy can be something like adding “$” or “#” symbols after every N(words)-1 (3rd) sequential syllable (syllable - as defined in Russian grammar, not English) in that string of Russian words and alternate these symbols if used previously:

cnjzkOtn$rjqUjce#lfhmGj-yt$vtwrb

With this technique you will have the power to create, remember, and obfuscate complex passwords. You can even have fun with this one, for example, you can use Russian passwords for professional accounts and Ukrainian for personal.

Caveats

1. Touchscreens are the trickiest to get used to. It will take some practice on your favorite devices but still, you should catch on rather quickly (keyboard layouts still the same, positioning is different, absence of physical feedback also throws you off pretty bad)
2. Different physical keyboards might also require some getting used to (various flavors, standards with system keys being all over the place these days doesn’t help at all)

Bonus

Exclusivity? We, people who have muscle memory of multiple keyboard layouts for different languages, are a dying breed. With touch screens, virtual keyboards taking over, it will be practically impossible to acquire this skill for the kids these days.

Although, that may not be a bad thing. Being physical keyboard agnostic and being able to use language’s native alphabet when communicating in different languages is surely useful and fun but certainly not an important life skill.