Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT) or theUralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is aphonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for thetranscription andreconstruction ofUralic languages. It was first published in 1901 byEemil Nestor Setälä, aFinnish linguist; it was somewhat modified in the 1970s.^[1]

FUT differs from theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation in several ways, notably in exploiting italics or boldface rather than using brackets to delimit text, in the use of small capitals fordevoicing, and in more frequent use of diacritics to differentiate places of articulation.

The basic FUT characters are based on theFinnish alphabet where possible, with extensions taken fromCyrillic andGreekorthographies. Small-capital letters and some noveldiacritics are also used.

Unlike the IPA, which is usually transcribed inRoman typeface, FUT is transcribed initalic andbold typeface. Its extended characters are found in thePhonetic Extensions andPhonetic Extensions Supplement blocks. Computer font support is available through any good phonetics font, though lower-case and small-capital may not be visibly distinct in letters such aso where these look similar.

Avowel to the left of a dot isillabial (unrounded); to the right islabial (rounded). To the right are the IPA cognates.^[1]

	Palatal	Central		Velar
Close	i (i) •ü (y) i̮ (ɨ) •u̮ (ʉ) ị (ɯ)•u (u) e (e) •ö (ø) e̮ (ɘ) •o̮ (ɵ) ẹ (ɤ) •o (o) ä (a) •α̈ (ɶ) a̮ (ä) •α̮ (äᵝ) a (ɑ) •α (ɒ)
Mid
Open

Some sources usea å as the only pair of open vowels.y andɯ are sometimes used for roundedü andu̮.

If a distinction betweenclose-mid vowels andopen-mid vowels is needed, the IPA letters ⟨ɛ⟩ and ⟨ɔ⟩ can be used. That row is then:

ɛ ɔ̈ —ɛ̮ ɔ̮ —ɛ̣ ɔ

æ lies betweenä andɛ;œ betweenα̈ andɔ̈;ø betweenɔ̈ andö.^[2]

FUT has dedicated characters for wildcards or to denote a vowel of uncertain quality:

• ʌ (or in some sourcesɜ) denotes any vowel;
• ᴕ denotes any back vowel;
• ᴕ̈ denotes any front vowel.

The following table describes the consonants of FUT. A 'spirant' in this usage is a non-sibilant fricative. Under 'approximants',v w j ɦ and their voiceless counterparts are 'semivowels', whileɹ ɹ̤ are 'vibrationless rhotics'. Palatalized consonants are indicated with an acute accent. Only a few are shown in the table; the velar letters with an acute are commonly used for palatal consonants.

When there are two or more consonants in a column, the lowest one is voiced; when there are three, the centre one is lenis or partially devoiced and the top one is fortis or fully devoiced.

ʟ̌ l‌̌ (not shown in the table, equivalent to ɬ and ɮ in the IPA) are lateral fricatives.v̌ (v) andȟ (h) in the table are also fricatives derived from letters for approximants.

*ᴫ л are defined as dark alveolars, withᴌ ł being 'half-dark', but other sources defineᴫ л as velar. They are distinct in italic typeface, which is the norm for FUT phonetic notation.

Other sources haveᴃ andᴆ for fricativeʙ ᴅ, andᴩ ρ for the uvular trills.

The Uralic languages transcribed with this system do not contain non-pulmonic consonants except paralinguistically, thus onlyclicks are supported by FUT. There are two conventions: a leftward arrow, forp˿ b˿ t˿ d˿ ḱ˿ ǵ˿ etc., and Greek letters, forᴨ π ᴛ τ ᴋ κ etc. Nasal clicks can presumably be writtenᴍ˿ m˿ ɴ˿ n˿ ᴎ́˿ ή˿ etc. under the first convention.

From extremely short (superscript) to extra-long (circumflex), length of vowels and consonants is indicated as follows:

ᵃ ă a a˴ à a͐ ā â

For diphthongs, triphthongs and prosody, Finno-Ugric transcription uses several forms of thetie or double breve:^[3][4]

• The triple inverted breve or triple breve below indicates atriphthong^{[clarification needed]}
• The double inverted breve, also known as the ligature tie, marks adiphthong^{[clarification needed]}
• The double inverted breve below indicates a syllable boundary between vowels^{[clarification needed]}
• The undertie is used forprosody^{[clarification needed]}
• The inverted undertie is used for prosody.^{[clarification needed]}

A major difference is that IPA notation distinguishes between phonetic and phonemic transcription by enclosing the transcription between either brackets[aɪpʰiːeɪ] or slashes/aipie/. FUT instead usesitalic typeface for the former andbold typeface for the latter.^[5]

For phonetic transcription, numerous small differences from IPA come into relevance:

• FUTe, o denotemid vowels with no particular bias towards open or close, as are found in most Uralic languages. IPA[e],[o] denoteclose-mid vowels in particular, common in Romance and West Germanic languages.
• FUT has no simple way to denote a basicschwa sound, IPA[ə]. The letterə denotes a reduced form ofe, corresponding to IPA[e̽]. The two alphabets match with a reduceda sound, which isɐ in both FUT and IPA.
• For thevoiced dental fricative, FUT uses a Greek deltaδ, while IPA uses the lettereth[ð]. In FUT, ethð stands for analveolar tap, IPA[ɾ].
• FUT uses Greek chiχ for thevoiceless velar fricative. In IPA,[χ] stands for avoiceless uvular fricative, while the velar counterpart is[x] (not used in FUT except as a wildcard for any consonant).
• FUT usessmall caps fordevoiced sounds (ᴀ ʙ ᴅ ɢ ᴇ etc.), while IPA uses a ring diacritic.

Examples:

TheIETF language tags registerfonupa as a subtag for text in this notation.^[6]

Few system fonts support the small capitals. Support is available through any good phonetics font, such as (among free fonts)Gentium,Andika,Noto,DejaVu andEB Garamond, though lower-case and small-capitalᴄ,л,o,v,w andz may not be distinct in italic typeface and are rarely distinct in bold. DejaVu and EB Garamond do not support stacked the diacritics inš́, ᴢ̌́, ž́. EB Garamond includes the Unicode small capitals in its roman typeface but not in italic or bold, so automated formatting is applied, which makes the small capitals more distinct. Following are pairs of small capital and lower case in these fonts; the fonts must be installed on your computer or phone to display here.

This section contains some sample words from both Uralic languages and English (usingAustralian 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.

• Phonetic alphabets
• Unicode
• Uralic languages
• Writing systems introduced in 1901

• CS1 maint: location missing publisher
• CS1 German-language sources (de)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Pages with plain IPA
• Wikipedia articles needing clarification from September 2024
• CS1 Finnish-language sources (fi)