Uralic Phonetic Alphabet

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 Finnish linguist.

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.

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 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).

Other vowels are denoted using diacritics.

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

  • ɜ denotes a vowel of uncertain quality;
  • ᴕ denotes a back vowel of uncertain quality;
  • ᴕ̈ 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 ⟨ɔ̈⟩ and ⟨ɛ̮⟩.

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].

UPA consonants
 StopFricativeLateralTrillNasalClick
Bilabial pʙb φβ ᴪψ ᴍm p˿b˿
Labiodental p͔ʙ͔ b͔ fv ᴍ͔m͔
Dental ϑδ
Alveolar tᴅd ᴙ sᴢz šž ʟl ʀr ɴn t˿d˿
Dentipalatal (palatalised) ťᴅ́ď śᴢ́ź š́ž́ ʟ́ĺ ʀ́ŕ ɴ́ń  
Prepalatal (palatalised or anterior) ḱɢ́ǵ χ́j ᴎ́ŋ́
Velar kɢg χγ ᴎŋ k˿g˿
Postvelar k͔ɢ͔g͔ χ͔γ͔ ᴫ ᴎ͔ŋ͔
Uvular ᴩρ

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.

ʔ denotes a voiced velar spirant.

ᴤ denotes a voiced laryngeal spirant.

Modifiers
UPA modifier characters
CharacterUnicodeImageDescriptionUse
äU+0308-umlaut abovePalatal (fully front) vowel
ạU+0323dot belowPalatal (fronted) variant of vowel
a̮U+032Ebreve belowVelar (fully back or backed) vowel or variant of vowel
āU+0304macronLong form of a vowel; also by duplication
a͔U+0354left arrowhead belowRetracted form of a vowel or consonant
a͕U+0355right arrowhead belowAdvanced form of a vowel or consonant
a̭U+032Dcircumflex belowRaised variant of a vowel
a̬U+032Ccaron belowLowered variant of a vowel
ăU+0306breveShorter or reduced vowel
a̯U+032Finverted breve belowNon-syllabic, glide or semi-vowel
ʀU+0280small capitalUnvoiced or partially voiced version of voiced sound
ⁱsuperscripted characterVery short sound
ₔsubscripted characterCoarticulation due to surrounding sounds
ᴞU+1D1ERotated (180°) or sideways (−90°)Reduced form of sound

For diphthongs, triphthongs and prosody, the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses several forms of the tie or double breve:[1][2]

  • 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.[3]

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]. ə denotes a reduced form of e, corresponding with IPA [e̽]. A further backing diacritic must be appended, resulting in ə̑. (This may also stand for a reduced form of e̮, corresponding with IPA [ɤ̽]; a distinction rarely encountered in practice.)
  • For the voiced dental fricative, UPA uses a Greek delta δ, while IPA uses the letter eth [ð]. In UPA, eth ð 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 (ᴀ ʙ ᴅ ɢ ᴇ…), while in IPA, these frequently occur as distinct basic character 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 ń may correspond to either IPA [nʲ] or [ɳ].

Examples:

SoundUPAIPA
Close-mid back rounded vowel o̭[o]
Mid back rounded vowel o[o̞] or [ɔ̝]
Open-mid back rounded vowel o̬ or å̭ [ɔ]
Voiced dental fricative δ[ð]
Alveolar tap ð[ɾ]
Voiceless alveolar lateral approximant ʟ[l̥]
Velar lateral approximant л[ʟ]
Voiceless alveolar nasal ɴ[n̥]
Uvular nasal ŋ͔[ɴ]
Voiceless alveolar trill ʀ [r̥]
Uvular trill ρ [ʀ]

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
LanguageUPAIPAMeaning
Englishšᴉp[ʃɪp]'ship'
Englishrän[ɹæn]'ran'
Englishʙo̭o̭d[b̥oːd]'bode'
Mokshavə̂ďän[vɤ̈dʲæn]'I sow'
Udmurtmiśkᴉ̑nᴉ̑[misʲkɪ̈nɪ̈]'to wash'
Forest Nenetsŋàrŋū̬"ᴲ [ŋɑˑrŋu̞ːʔə̥]'nostril'
Hill Maripᴞ·ń(ᴅ́ᴢ̌́ö̭[ˈpʏnʲd̥͡ʑ̥ø]'pine'
Skolt Sami pŭə̆ī̮ᵈt̄ėi[pŭə̆ɨːd̆tːəi]'ermine'

Literature
  • Setälä, E. N. (1901). "Über transskription der finnisch-ugrischen sprachen". Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen (in German). Helsingfors, Leipzig (1): 15–52.
  • Sovijärvi, Antti; Peltola, Reino (1970). "Suomalais-ugrilainen tarkekirjoitus" (PDF). Helsingin yliopiston fonetiikan laitoksen julkaisuja (in Finnish). University of Helsinki (9). hdl:10224/4089.
  • Posti, Lauri; Itkonen, Terho (1973). "FU-transkription yksinkertaistaminen. Az FU-átírás egyszerüsítése. 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" (PDF).
gollark: I assemble them as needed because laesers are horrendously expensive.
gollark: Traffic lights, 40KST each.
gollark: 160KST pls
gollark: Yes, for 40KST.
gollark: Actually, I need to do that.

References
  1. Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS, 2002-03-20.
  2. Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Klaas Ruppel, Tero Aalto, Michael Everson, 2009-01-27.
  3. Setälä, E. N. (1901). Über transskription der finnisch-ugrischen sprachen (in German). Helsingfors, Leipzig. p. 47.
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