Uralic Phonetic Alphabet

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The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription of Finno-Ugric languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nestor Setälä, a Finnish linguist.

This page contains rare Unicode characters. You may need to install Code2000 to view some characters.

Unlike the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notational standard which concentrates on accurately and uniquely transcribing the phonemes of a language, the UPA is also used to denote the functional categories of a language, as well as their phonetic quality. For this reason, it is not possible to automatically convert a UPA transcription into an IPA one.

The basic UPA characters are based on the Finnish alphabet where possible, with extensions taken from Cyrillic and Greek orthographies. Small-capital letters and some novel diacritics are also used.

Contents

[edit] General

Unlike the IPA, which is usually transcribed with upright characters, the UPA is usually transcribed with italic characters. Although many of its characters are also used in standard Latin, Greek, Cyrillic orthographies or the IPA, and are found in the corresponding Unicode blocks, many are not. These have been encoded in the Phonetic Extensions and Phonetic Extensions Supplement blocks. Font support for these extended characters is very rare; Code2000 is one font which does support them.

[edit] Vowels

A vowel to the left of a dot is illabial (unrounded); to the right is labial (rounded).

  Palatal Central Velar
Close
iü
u


eö
o


ä
aå
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Other vowels are denoted using diacritics; see the section below.

The UPA also uses three characters to denote a vowel of uncertain quality:

  • ɜ denotes a vowel of uncertain quality;
  • denotes a back vowel of uncertain quality;
  • ᴕ́̈ denotes a front vowel of uncertain quality

[edit] Consonants

The following table describes the consonants of the UPA. Note that the UPA does not distinguish voiced fricatives from approximates, and does not contain many characters of the IPA such as [ɹ].

UPA consonants
  Stop Fricative Lateral Trill Nasal Click
Bilabial p ʙ b φ β ψ m p˿ b˿
Labiodental ʙ͔ f v ᴍ͔
Dental θ δ
Alveolar t d s z š ž ʟ l ʀ r ɴ n t˿ d˿
Dentipalatal (palatalised) ť ᴅ́ ď ś ᴢ́ ź š́ ž́ ʟ́ ĺ ʀ́ ŕ ɴ́ ń  
Prepalatal (palatalised and/or anterior) ɢ́ ǵ χ́ j ᴎ́ ŋ́
Velar k ɢ g χ γ ŋ k˿ g˿
Postvelar ɢ͔ χ͔ γ͔ ᴎ͔ ŋ͔
Uvular ρ

When there are two or more consonants in a column, the rightmost one is voiced; when there are three, the centre one is partially devoiced.

[edit] Modifiers

UPA modifier characters
Character Unicode Image Description Use
U+0323 Image:UPA a-dot below.png dot below Palatal variant of vowel
U+032F Image:UPA a-breve below.png breve below Velar variant of a vowel
ā U+0304 Image:UPA a-macron.png macron Long form of a vowel; also by duplication
U+0354 Image:UPA a-left arrowhead.png left arrowhead below Advanced form of a vowel or consonant
U+0355 Image:UPA a-right arrowhead.png right arrowhead below Retracted form of a vowel or consonant
U+032D Image:UPA a-circumflex below.png circumflex below Raised variant of a vowel
U+032C Image:UPA a-caron below.png caron below Lowered variant of a vowel
ă U+0306 Image:UPA a-breve.png breve Shorter or reduced vowel
U+032F Image:UPA a-inverted breve below.png inverted breve below Non-syllabic, glide or semi-vowel
ʀ Image:Xsampa-Rslash.png small capital Unvoiced or partially voiced version of voiced sound
i superscripted character Very short sound
ə subscripted character Coarticulation due to surrounding sounds
Image:UPA sideways diaresised u.png Rotated (180°) or sideways (−90°) Reduced form of sound

[edit] Sample use of UPA

This section contains some sample words from both Finno-Ugric languages and English (using Australian English) along with comparisons to the IPA transcription.

Sample UPA words
English Language UPA IPA
ship English šip ʃɪp
ran English rän ræn
bored English bo̭o̭d boːd/boɹd (depends on accent)
I sow Moksha və̂ďán  ?

[edit] External links

Languages