Uralic Phonetic Alphabet

Short description: Phonetic alphabet for Uralic languages

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

UPA differs from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation in several ways.

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.

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 and Fixedsys Excelsior are two fonts that do support them. A professional font containing them is Andron Mega; it supports UPA characters in Regular and Italics.

Vowels

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

	Palatal	Central		Velar
Close	Template:UPA Template:UPA Template:UPA Template:UPA Template:UPA
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Other vowels are denoted using diacritics.

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

• Template:UPA denotes a vowel of uncertain quality;
• Template:UPA denotes a back vowel of uncertain quality;
• Template:UPA denotes a front vowel of uncertain quality

If a distinction between close-mid vowels and open-mid vowels is needed, the IPA symbols for the open-mid basic front illabial and back labial vowels, ⟨ɛ⟩ and ⟨ɔ⟩, can be used. However, in keeping with the principles of the UPA, the open-mid front labial and back illabial vowels are still transcribed with the addition of diacritics, as ⟨Template:UPA⟩ and ⟨Template:UPA⟩.

Consonants

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

UPA consonants

	Plosive			Fricative							Lateral		Trill		Nasal		Click
Bilabial	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	þ	ŵ	Template:UPA		Template:UPA	φ’	β’			Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA
Labiodental	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	ŧ	w	Template:UPA		Template:UPA	f’	v’					Template:UPA	Template:UPA
Dental	τ		ς	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	ф		б	ф’	б’
Alveolar	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	ҵ	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA
Dentipalatal (palatalised)	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	j’	k’	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA
Prepalatal (palatalised or anterior)	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA			Template:UPA		Template:UPA							Template:UPA	Template:UPA
Velar	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA			Template:UPA		Template:UPA							Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA
Postvelar	Template:UPA	Template:UPA	Template:UPA			Template:UPA		Template:UPA			Template:UPA	Template:UPA			Template:UPA	Template:UPA
Uvular	q	ɢ̆	ğ										Template:UPA	Template:UPA

Small-cap (voiceless) and lower-case (voiced) л are distinct when italic.

When there are two or more consonants in a column, the rightmost one is voiced; when there are three, the centre one is lenis or partially devoiced. Small-capital ⟨ᴫ⟩ and lower-case ⟨л⟩ are distinct in italic typeface, which is the norm for phonetic notation.

ʔ denotes a glottal stop.

ᴤ denotes a voiced laryngeal spirant.

Modifiers

UPA modifier characters

Example	Image	Description	Use
Template:UPA	-	umlaut above	Palatal (fully front) vowel
Template:UPA		dot below	Palatal (fronted) variant of vowel
Template:UPA		breve below	Velar (fully back or backed) vowel or variant of vowel
Template:UPA		macron	Long form of a vowel; also by duplication
Template:UPA		left arrowhead below	Retracted form of a vowel or consonant
Template:UPA		right arrowhead below	Advanced form of a vowel or consonant
Template:UPA		circumflex below	Raised variant of a vowel
Template:UPA		caron below	Lowered variant of a vowel
Template:UPA		breve	Shorter or reduced vowel
Template:UPA		inverted breve below	Non-syllabic, glide or semi-vowel
Template:UPA		small capital	Unvoiced or partially voiced version of voiced sound
Template:UPA	-	superscripted character	Very short sound
Template:UPA	-	subscripted character	Coarticulation due to surrounding sounds
Template:UPA		Rotated (180°) or sideways (−90° or 90°)	Reduced form of sound

For diphthongs, triphthongs and prosody, the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses several forms of the tie or double breve:

• The triple inverted breve or triple breve below indicates a triphthong
• The double inverted breve, also known as the ligature tie, marks a diphthong
• The double inverted breve below indicates a syllable boundary between vowels
• The undertie is used for prosody
• The inverted undertie is used for prosody.

Differences from IPA

A major difference is that IPA notation distinguishes between phonetic and phonemic transcription by enclosing the transcription between either brackets [aɪ pʰiː eɪ] or slashes /ai pi e/. UPA instead used italics for the former and half bold font for the latter.

For phonetic transcription, numerous small differences from IPA come into relevance:

• UPA e, o denote mid vowels with no particular bias towards open or close, as are found in most Uralic languages. IPA [e], [o] denote close-mid vowels in particular, common in Romance and West Germanic languages.
• Being designed for languages largely featuring vowel harmony, UPA has no simple way to denote a basic, backness-ambiguous schwa sound, IPA [ə]. Template:UPA denotes a reduced form of e, corresponding with IPA [e̽]. A further backing diacritic must be appended, resulting in Template:UPA. (This may also stand for a reduced form of Template:UPA, corresponding with IPA [ɤ̽]; a distinction rarely encountered in practice.)
• For the voiced dental fricative, UPA uses a Greek delta Template:UPA, while IPA uses the letter eth [ð]. In UPA, eth Template:UPA stands for an alveolar tap, IPA [ɾ].
• UPA uses Greek chi χ for the voiceless velar fricative. In IPA, [χ] stands for a voiceless uvular fricative, while the velar counterpart is [x] (a symbol unused in UPA).
• UPA uses small caps for voiceless or devoiced sounds (Template:UPA…), while in IPA, these frequently occur as distinct basic characters denoting entirely separate sounds (e.g. [ʙ ɢ ʟ ɴ]).
• UPA does not systematically distinguish approximants from fricatives. j may stand for both the palatal approximant (IPA [j]) or the voiced palatal fricative (IPA [ʝ]), v may stand for both the labiodental approximant (IPA [ʋ]) or the voiced labiodental fricative (IPA [v]), β may stand for the bilabial approximant (IPA [β̞]), the voiced bilabial fricative (IPA [β]), or in broad transcription even the labiovelar approximant (IPA [w]).
• UPA lacks a series of palatal consonants: these must be transcribed by either palatalized alveolar or palatalized velar symbols. Thus Template:UPA may correspond to either IPA [nʲ] or [ɲ].

Examples:

Sound	UPA	IPA
Close-mid back rounded vowel	Template:UPA	[o]
Mid back rounded vowel	Template:UPA	[o̞] or [ɔ̝]
Open-mid back rounded vowel	Template:UPA or Template:UPA	[ɔ]
Voiced dental fricative	Template:UPA	[ð]
Alveolar tap	Template:UPA	[ɾ]
Voiceless alveolar lateral approximant	Template:UPA	[l̥]
Velar lateral approximant	Template:UPA	[ʟ]
Voiceless alveolar nasal	Template:UPA	[n̥]
Uvular nasal	Template:UPA	[ɴ]
Voiceless alveolar trill	ʀ	[r̥]
Uvular trill ... Uvular plosive	ρ ğ	[ʀ] [ɢ]

Sample

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

Sample UPA words

Language	UPA	IPA	Meaning
English	Template:UPA	[ʃɪp]	'ship'
English	Template:UPA	[ɹæn]	'ran'
English	Template:UPA	[b̥oːd]	'bored'
Moksha	Template:UPA	[vɤ̈dʲæn]	'I sow'
Udmurt	Template:UPA	[miɕkɪ̈nɪ̈]	'to wash'
Forest Nenets	Template:UPA	[ŋɑˑrŋu̞ːʔə̥]	'nostril'
Hill Mari	Template:UPA	[ˈpʏnʲd̥͡ʑ̥ø]	'pine'
Skolt Sami	Template:UPA	[pŭə̆ɨːd̆tːəi]	'ermine'

See also

• Americanist phonetic notation

Literature

• Setälä, E. N. (1901). "Über transskription der finnisch-ugrischen sprachen" (in German). Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen (Helsingfors, Leipzig) (1): 15–52. https://archive.org/stream/finnischugrische01helsuoft/#page/n24/mode/1up. 
• Sovijärvi, Antti; Peltola, Reino (1970). "Suomalais-ugrilainen tarkekirjoitus" (in Finnish). Helsingin Yliopiston Fonetiikan Laitoksen Julkaisuja (University of Helsinki) (9). https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10224/4089/sovijarvi1-24.pdf. 
• Posti, Lauri; Itkonen, Terho (1973). "FU-transkription yksinkertaistaminen. Az FU-átírás egyszerűsítése. Zur Vereinfachung der FU-Transkription. On Simplifying of the FU-transcription". Castrenianumin Toimitteita (University of Helsinki) (7). ISBN 951-45-0282-5. ISSN 0355-0141. 
• Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet". https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2009/09028-n3571-upa-additions.pdf.