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The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a
phonetic transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of
Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nestor Setälä, a Finnish 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 Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
orthographies An orthography is a set of conventions for writing Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically Epigraphy, inscribed, Printing press, mechanically transferred, o ...
. Small-capital letters and some novel
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s 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 Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
,
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, Cyrillic orthographies or the IPA, and are found in the corresponding
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
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 A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
to the left of a dot is illabial (unrounded); to the right is labial (
rounded Round or rounds may refer to: Mathematics and science * The contour of a closed curve or surface with no sharp corners, such as an ellipse, circle, rounded rectangle, cant, or sphere * Rounding, the shortening of a number to reduce the num ...
).
Other vowels are denoted using diacritics. The UPA also uses three characters to denote a vowel of uncertain quality: * ' denotes a vowel of uncertain quality; * ' denotes a back vowel of uncertain quality; * ' 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, and , 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 and .


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 . 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

For diphthongs, triphthongs and prosody, the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses several forms of the
tie Tie has two principal meanings: * Tie (draw), a finish to a competition with identical results, particularly sports * Necktie, a long piece of cloth worn around the neck or shoulders Tie or TIE may also refer to: Engineering and technology * Ti ...
or double breve:''Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet''
Klaas Ruppel, Tero Aalto, Michael Everson, 2009-01-27. * The triple inverted breve or triple breve below indicates a
triphthong In phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech a ...
* The double inverted breve, also known as the ligature tie, marks a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
* 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 and UPA and languages

A major difference is that IPA notation distinguishes between phonetic and phonemic transcription by enclosing the transcription between either brackets or slashes . 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 vowel A mid vowel (or a true-mid vowel) is any in a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned midway between an open vowel and a close vowel. Other names for a m ...
s with no particular bias towards open or close, as are found in most Uralic languages. IPA , denote close-mid vowels in particular, common in Romance and West Germanic languages. * Being designed for languages largely featuring
vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...
, UPA has no simple way to denote a basic, backness-ambiguous
schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English ...
sound, IPA . ' denotes a reduced form of ''e'', corresponding with IPA . A further backing diacritic must be appended, resulting in '. (This may also stand for a reduced form of ', corresponding with IPA ; a distinction rarely encountered in practice.) * For the
voiced dental fricative The voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ''th'' sound in ''father''. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, or and was taken from the Old En ...
, UPA uses a Greek delta ', while IPA uses the letter eth . In UPA, eth ' stands for an
alveolar tap Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit. Uses in anatomy and zoology * Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs ** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte ** Alveolar duct ** Alveolar macrophage * M ...
, IPA . * UPA uses Greek chi ''χ'' for the
voiceless velar fricative The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, e.g. in ''l ...
. In IPA, stands for a
voiceless uvular fricative The voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the Greek chi. The sound is represented by (ex with underdot) in A ...
, while the velar counterpart is (a symbol unused in UPA). * UPA uses
small caps In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technica ...
for
voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
or devoiced sounds (''…''), while in IPA, these frequently occur as distinct basic characters denoting entirely separate sounds (e.g. ). * UPA does not systematically distinguish approximants from
fricative A fricative is a consonant manner of articulation, produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation, articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the ba ...
s. ''j'' may stand for both the
palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic n ...
(IPA ) or the
voiced palatal fricative The voiced palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is (crossed-tail j), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j\. It is t ...
(IPA ), ''v'' may stand for both the labiodental approximant (IPA ) or the
voiced labiodental fricative The voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is v. The sound is similar to v ...
(IPA ), ''β'' may stand for the bilabial approximant (IPA ), the
voiced bilabial fricative The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B. The offi ...
(IPA ), or in broad transcription even the
labiovelar approximant Labiovelar consonant may refer to: * Labial–velar consonant such as (a consonant made at two places of articulation, one at the lips and the other at the soft palate) * Labialized velar consonant such as or (a consonant with an approximant-li ...
(IPA ). * UPA lacks a series of
palatal consonant Palatals are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex. Characteris ...
s: these must be transcribed by either palatalized alveolar or palatalized velar symbols. Thus ' may correspond to either IPA or . Examples:


Sample

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


See also

*
Americanist phonetic notation Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American an ...


Literature

* * * * {{cite web, first1=Klaas, last1=Ruppel, first2=Tero, last2=Aalto, first3=Michael, last3=Everson, url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2009/09028-n3571-upa-additions.pdf, title=L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, date=2009


References

Phonetic alphabets Unicode Uralic languages