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Phonetic alphabet for Uralic languages From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
![]() | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (March 2018) |
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.
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:
If a distinction between close-mid vowels and open-mid vowels is needed, the IPA symbols for the open-mid basic front unrounded and back rounded vowels, ⟨ɛ⟩ and ⟨ɔ⟩, can be used. However, in keeping with the principles of the UPA, the open-mid front rounded and back unrounded vowels are still transcribed with the addition of diacritics, as ⟨ɔ̈⟩ and ⟨ɛ̮⟩.
The following table describes the consonants of the UPA. The UPA does not distinguish voiced fricatives from approximants, and does not contain many characters of the IPA such as [ɹ], [ɟ], or [ʒ].
Plosive | Fricative | Lateral | Trill | Nasal | Click | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bilabial | p | ʙ | b | þ | ŵ | φ | β | φ’ | β’ | ᴪ | ψ | ᴍ | m | p˿ | b˿ | |||
Labiodental | p͔ | ʙ͔ | b͔ | ŧ | w | f | v | f’ | v’ | ᴍ͔ | m͔ | |||||||
Dental | τ | ς | ϑ | δ | ф | б | ф’ | б’ | ||||||||||
Alveolar | t | ᴅ | d | ҵ | ᴙ | s | ᴢ | z | š | ž | ʟ | l | ʀ | r | ɴ | n | t˿ | d˿ |
Dentipalatal (palatalised) | t́ | ᴅ́ | d́ | j’ | k’ | ś | ᴢ́ | ź | š́ | ž́ | ʟ́ | ĺ | ʀ́ | ŕ | ɴ́ | ń | ||
Prepalatal (palatalised or anterior) | ḱ | ɢ́ | ǵ | χ́ | j | ᴎ́ | ŋ́ | |||||||||||
Velar | k | ɢ | g | χ | γ | ᴎ | ŋ | k˿ | g˿ | |||||||||
Postvelar | k͔ | ɢ͔ | g͔ | χ͔ | γ͔ | ᴫ | л | ᴎ͔ | ŋ͔ | |||||||||
Uvular | q | ɢ̆ | ğ | ᴩ | ρ |
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.
Example | Image | Description | Use |
---|---|---|---|
ä | - | diaeresis above | Palatal (fully front) vowel |
ạ | ![]() | dot below | Palatal (fronted) variant of vowel |
a̮ | ![]() | breve below | Velar (fully back or backed) vowel or variant of vowel |
ā | ![]() | macron | Long form of a vowel; also by duplication |
a͔ | ![]() | left arrowhead below | Retracted form of a vowel or consonant |
a͕ | ![]() | right arrowhead below | Advanced form of a vowel or consonant |
a̭ | ![]() | circumflex below | Raised variant of a vowel |
a̬ | ![]() | caron below | Lowered variant of a vowel |
ă | ![]() | breve | Shorter or reduced vowel |
a̯ | ![]() | inverted breve below | Non-syllabic, glide or semi-vowel |
ʀ | ![]() | small capital | Unvoiced or partially voiced version of voiced sound |
ⁱ | - | superscripted character | Very short sound |
ₔ | - | subscripted character | Coarticulation due to surrounding sounds |
ᴞ | ![]() | 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:[1] [2]
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:
Examples:
Sound | UPA | IPA |
---|---|---|
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 ... Uvular plosive | ρ ğ | [ʀ]
[ɢ] |
The IETF language tags register fonupa
as a subtag for text in this notation.[4]
This section contains some sample words from both Uralic languages and English (using Australian English) along with comparisons to the IPA transcription.
Language | UPA | IPA | Meaning |
---|---|---|---|
English | šᴉp | [ʃɪp] | 'ship' |
English | rän | [ɹæn] | 'ran' |
English | ʙo̭o̭d | [b̥oːd] | 'bored' |
Moksha | və̂ďän | [vɤ̈dʲæn] | 'I sow' |
Udmurt | miśkᴉ̑nᴉ̑ | [miɕkɪ̈nɪ̈] | 'to wash' |
Forest Nenets | ŋàrŋū̬"ᴲ | [ŋɑˑrŋu̞ːʔə̥] | 'nostril' |
Hill Mari | pᴞ·ń₍ᴅ́ᴢ̌́ö̭ | [ˈpʏnʲd̥͡ʑ̥ø] | 'pine' |
Skolt Sami | pŭə̆ī̮ᵈt̄ėi | [pŭə̆ɨːd̆tːəi] | 'ermine' |