Uralic Phonetic Alphabet

The research into the Finno-Ugric languages utilizes a special method of transcription based on a proposal by E.N. Setälä in 1902 (see Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 1: 36). The transcription is presented in a detailed manner in A. Sovijärvi’s ja R. Peltola’s work Suomalais-ugrilainen tarkekirjoitus [Uralic Phonetic Alphabet], part of a series of publications by the Department of Phonetics of the University of Helsinki. The booklet came out in many reprints between 1953 and 1977.

The development of information technology has made it possible to type all the Uralic languages in a smooth and compatible manner across different computer programs and devices. Adhering to uniform practices enables independence of programs and devices. 

These pages are targeted at everyone using the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA for short; in Finnish: SUT = suomalais-ugrilainen tarkekirjoitus) or the Uralic normal orthographies which also include other than the basic Latin characters.

You can download a keyboard driver on these pages, compatible with both Mac and Windows, which facilitates typing the special characters and diacritics in Unicode.

What is Unicode?

The Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) is a universal character set defined by the ISO standard ISO/IEC 10646 and a standard developed by the Unicode Consortium, which was set up by certain program and device manufacturers a long time ago. In practice, this universal character set is often referred to as Unicode.
In addition to the thousands of letter characters and other symbols used in the different languages around the world, the most recent version of Unicode, version 5, contains all the characters necessary in the transcription of the Uralic languages. 

Many present-day devices and programs support Unicode and it is already widely used in, e.g., the Windows and Mac environments. The universal character set opens up completely new opportunities in the research into the Uralic languages.

Publishing becomes easier, as the character problems related to the phonetic alphabet fonts can be avoided. It is possible to publish any text on the internet without having problems with diacritics and the Cyrillic alphabet that have been causing problems before; they function just as the basic Latin characters.