Unlike the International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

 (IPA) notational standard which concentrates on accurately and uniquely transcribing the phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

s of a language, the UPA is also used to denote the functional categories of a language, as well as their phonetic

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

 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

Finnish alphabet

The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin script, and especially the Swedish alphabet. Officially it comprises 28 letters:A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö...

 where possible, with extensions taken from Cyrillic and Greek

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...

 orthographies

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

. Small-capital letters and some novel diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

s are also used.

General

Unlike the IPA, which is usually transcribed with upright

Roman type

In typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic. Roman type was modelled from a European scribal manuscript style of the 1400s, based on the pairing of inscriptional capitals used in ancient Rome with Carolingian minuscules developed in the...

 characters, the UPA is usually transcribed with italic

Italic type

In typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...

 characters. Although many of its characters are also used in standard Latin

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

, Greek

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...

, Cyrillic

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

 orthographies or the IPA, and are found in the corresponding Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 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

Code2000

Code2000 is a pan-Unicode digital font, which includes characters and symbols from a very large range of writing systems. As of the current final version 1.171 released in 2008, Code2000 is designed and implemented by James Kass to include as much of the Unicode 5.2 standard as practical , and to...

 and Fixedsys Excelsior

Fixedsys Excelsior

Fixedsys Excelsior is an unofficial pan-Unicode extension of the popular Microsoft font Fixedsys. The current version, last updated in 2007, is 3.01....

 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

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

 to the left of a dot is illabial (unrounded); to the right is labial (rounded).
Other vowels are denoted using diacritics; see the section below.

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 vowel

Close-mid vowel

A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...

s 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 and .

Consonants

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

UPA consonants

	Stop			Fricative							Lateral		Trill		Nasal		Click
Bilabial
Labiodental
Dental
Alveolar
Dentipalatal (palatalised)
Prepalatal (palatalised and/or anterior)
Velar
Postvelar
Uvular

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.

Modifiers

UPA modifier characters

Character	Unicode	Image	Description	Use
	U+0308	-	umlaut above	Palatal (fully front) vowel
	U+0323		dot below	Palatal (fronted) variant of vowel
	U+032E		breve below	Velar (fully back or backed) vowel or variant of vowel
	U+0304		macron	Long form of a vowel; also by duplication
	U+0354		left arrowhead below	Advanced form of a vowel or consonant
	U+0355		right arrowhead below	Retracted form of a vowel or consonant
	U+032D		circumflex below	Raised variant of a vowel
	U+032C		caron below	Lowered variant of a vowel
	U+0306		breve	Shorter or reduced vowel
	U+032F		inverted breve below	Non-syllabic, glide or semi-vowel
	U+0280		small capital	Unvoiced or partially voiced version of voiced sound
			superscripted character	Very short sound
			subscripted character	Coarticulation due to surrounding sounds
	U+1D1E		Rotated (180°) or sideways (−90°)	Reduced form of sound

Sample use of UPA

This section contains some sample words from both Uralic languages and English (using Australian English

Australian English phonology

Australian English is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians. Phonologically, it is one of the most regionally homogeneous language varieties in the world...

) along with comparisons to the IPA transcription.

Sample UPA words

English	Language	UPA	IPA
ship	English		ʃɪp
ran	English		ræn or ɹæn
bored	English		boːd
I sow	Moksha Moksha language The Moksha language is a member of the Finno-Volgaic subdivision of the Uralic languages with about 500,000 native speakers. Moksha is the majority language in the western part of Mordovia....		vɤ̈dʲæn

External links

• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS