University of Calgary Phonetic Inventory

Hosted by the Dept. of Linguistics at Fresno State University


The UCPI constitutes a set of language recordings made under the direction of Professor Michael Dobrovolsky, of the Dept. of Linguistics at the University of Calgary.  These recordings date back to the 1990s, and most were made using high-quality analog reel tape.  Some were recorded using digital audio tape, a now defunct technology from that era. 

The UCPI at Fresno State contains recordings that were made with the specific purpose of illustrating all the sounds of the subject languages.  The sound files are huge, since they are largely unedited recording sessions with the native speakers.  Most of these sessions correlate quite easily and obviously with the corresponding PDF document.  The currently posted UCPI contains recording sessions illustrating the phonetics of 45 languages, several of which are represented by two or three dialects.  The languages were not selected with any special criteria in mind other than the ability to work with a native speaker.  For this reason, all of the native American languages in the inventory are spoken in Canada, usually in close proximity to Calgary.

Questions or problems with the posted files should be directed to Sean Fulop at Fresno State; his email is available through the Linguistics Department website.

 Sound files (wav)
 Documentation files (PDF)


Albanian
 Albanian PDF
Arabic (Egypt) Arabic (Egypt) PDF
Arabic (Lebanon) sp1
Arabic (Lebanon) sp1 PDF
Arabic (Lebanon) sp2 part1
Arabic sp2 part2
 Arabic (Lebanon) sp2 PDF
Bengali part1
Bengali part2 		Bengali PDF
Blackfoot (Old Siksika)
 		Blackfoot (Old) PDF
Blackfoot (New Siksika)
 Blackfoot (New) PDF
Bulgarian part1
Bulgarian part2
Bulgarian part3
 Bulgarian PDF
Cantonese part1
Cantonese part2
 Cantonese PDF
Catalan part1
Catalan part2
 Catalan PDF
Chichewa
 Chichewa PDF
Chipewyan
 Chipewyan PDF
Croatian (Herzegovina)
 Croatian (Herz) PDF
Croatian (Zagreb) part1
Croatian part2
 Croatian PDF
Czech
 Czech PDF
Danish
 Danish PDF
Dzongkha part1
Dzongkha part2
 Dzongkha PDF
Finnish part1
Finnish part2
 Finnish PDF
French (Lyons)
 French (Lyons) PDF
Frisian
 Frisian PDF
German (Berne)
 Baernduetsch PDF
German (Erfurt) part1
German part2
 German PDF
German (Plautdietsch)
 Plautdietsch PDF
Greek
This recording is probably a heritage speaker. Please disregard introductory remark which identifies the dialect as standard; it is Peloponnesian.
 Greek PDF
Hakka Chinese
 Hakka PDF
Hebrew (modern) sp1 part1
Hebrew sp1 part2
Hebrew sp2
 Hebrew PDF (incomplete)
Hokkien Chinese part1
Hokkien part2
 Hokkien PDF
Icelandic part1
Icelandic part2
 Icelandic PDF
Idoma
 Idoma PDF
Italian (Undine)
 Italian (Undine) PDF
Italian (Abruzzi)
 Italian (Abruzzi) PDF
Japanese
 Japanese PDF
Khmer (Cambodian)
 Khmer PDF
Korean
 Korean PDF
Latvian
 Latvian PDF
Malay
 Malay PDF
Norwegian
 Norwegian PDF
Polish part1
Polish part2
 Polish PDF
Portuguese (Brazil) part1
Portuguese part2
 Portuguese (Brazil) PDF
Romanian
 Romanian PDF
Russian part1
Russian part2
 Russian PDF
Sarcee tape1
Sarcee tape3
 Sarcee1 PDF
Sarcee3 PDF (no IPA)
Sharchhop tape1 (sp1)
Sharchhop tape2 (sp1)
Sharchhop tape3 (sp1+2)
Sharchhop tape4 (sp2)
 Sharchhop sp1 PDF
Sharchhop sp2 PDF
Sindebele (Zulu) part1
Sindebele (Zulu) part2
 Zulu PDF
Slavey (North)
 Slavey PDF
Slovak
 Slovak PDF
Spanish (Bolivia)
 Spanish PDF
Stoney (Alexis)
 Stoney (Alexis) PDF
Stoney (Morley)
 Stoney (Morley) PDF
Swedish (Skane)
 Swedish (Skane) PDF
Swedish (Stockholm)
 Swedish (Stockholm) PDF
Tibetan
 Tibetan PDF
Tigrinya
 Tigrinya PDF
Turkish
 Turkish PDF
Ukrainian
 Ukrainian PDF
Vietnamese
 Vietnamese PDF



A little background information

The UCPI was intiated by M. Dobrovolsky many years ago.  The recording sessions with native speakers were mostly conducted by his students over the years (with S. Fulop being one of these). Professor Sean Fulop of the Fresno State Linguistics department eventually obtained digital copies of most of the archive from Scott Moisik, a student of M. Dobrovolsky.  Prof. Fulop (with the assistance of the U of C Linguistics department) also made scans of hardcopies of the original documentation files and transcriptions, which are provided here in PDF.  The electronic files could not be used because of the outdated IPA font.  After using the inventory materials for teaching phonetics class, S. Fulop (a graduate of the U of C Linguistics program) realized that the materials should be made available for general access, and so undertook to upload the entire inventory currently documented.  More language recordings will be made available when possible.