Uralic Phonetic Alphabet

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

	Palatal	Central		Velar
Close	i • ü • u e • ö • o a • å
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:

• 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 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].

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.

UPA modifier characters

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]

• 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.

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 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 ń may correspond to either IPA [nʲ] or [ɲ].

Examples:

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

• Americanist phonetic notation

• Setälä, E. N. (1901). "Über transskription der finnisch-ugrischen sprachen". Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen (in German) (1). Helsingfors, Leipzig: 15–52.
• Sovijärvi, Antti; Peltola, Reino (1970). "Suomalais-ugrilainen tarkekirjoitus" (PDF). Helsingin Yliopiston Fonetiikan Laitoksen Julkaisuja (in Finnish) (9). University of Helsinki. hdl:10224/4089.
• 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 (7). University of Helsinki. ISBN 951-45-0282-5. ISSN 0355-0141.
• Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Unicode.