Palatals are

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

articulated An articulated vehicle is a vehicle which has a permanent or semi-permanent pivot joint in its construction, allowing it to turn more sharply. There are many kinds, from heavy equipment to buses, trams and trains. Steam locomotives were sometim ...

with the body of the tongue raised against the

hard palate The hard palate is a thin horizontal bony plate made up of two bones of the facial skeleton, located in the roof of the mouth. The bones are the palatine process of the maxilla and the horizontal plate of palatine bone. The hard palate spans t ...

(the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex.

Characteristics

The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common

approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce ...

, which ranks as among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages. The

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the world's languages, in most of which its equivalent

obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...

is not the stop , but the

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

. Only a few languages in northern Eurasia, the Americas and central Africa contrast palatal stops with

postalveolar Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...

affricates—as in Hungarian,

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

, Latvian,

Macedonian Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia. Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to: People Modern * Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North Ma ...

, Slovak, Turkish and Albanian. Consonants with other primary articulations may be palatalized, that is, accompanied by the raising of the tongue surface towards the hard palate. For example, English (spelled ''sh'') has such a palatal component, although its primary articulation involves the tip of the tongue and the upper gum (this type of articulation is called palatoalveolar). In

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

alveolo-palatal In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal artic ...

, palatoalveolar and

palatovelar Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...

consonants are commonly grouped as palatals, since these categories rarely contrast with true palatals. Sometimes palatalized alveolars or dentals can be analyzed in this manner as well.

Distinction from alveolo-palatal, apical palatalized consonants and consonant clusters

Palatal consonants can be distinguished from apical palatalized consonants and consonant clusters of a consonant and the palatal approximant . The common laminal "palatalized" alveolars, which also contrast with palatals, have a rather unique place of articulation and should be called

alveolo-palatal consonant In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal artic ...

. Palatal consonants have their

primary articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articul ...

toward or in contact with the

, whereas palatalized consonants have a primary articulation in some other area and a

secondary articulation In phonetics, secondary articulation occurs when the articulation of a consonant is equivalent to the combined articulations of two or three simpler consonants, at least one of which is an approximant. The secondary articulation of such co-articu ...

involving movement towards the hard palate. Palatal and palatalized consonants are both single

phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

, whereas a sequence of a consonant and is logically two phonemes. However, (post)palatal consonants in general do not contrast with palatalized velars, which in theory have slightly wider place of articulation than postpalatals.

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

distinguishes the dorsal

palatal nasal The voiced palatal nasal is a type of consonant used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter ''n'' with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom ...

(slender ''ng'') from both the laminal alveolo-palatal nasal ("lenis") (slender ''nn'') and the apical palatalized

alveolar nasal The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol ...

("fortis") (slender ''n''), nonetheless most modern Irish speakers may either merge the latter two or depalatalize the apical palatalized consonant. So is the difference between the two

Migueleño Chiquitano Migueleño Chiquitano (self-denomination: ''ózura'' , literally 'our speech') is a variety of the Chiquitano language of the Macro-Jê family, which is remembered by several dozen people of the Chiquitano ethnicity in San Miguel de Velasco ( S ...

stops. In both languages alveolo-palatal consonants correspond to the palatalization or slender of alveolars while palatal consonants correspond to the palatalization or slender of velars.

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

marginally distinguishes palatal consonants from sequences of a dental and the palatal approximant, e.g. in lleísmo Spanish the laterals ''ll'' (/l̠ʲ/→ʎ) and ''ly'' (/lj/→lɟʝ), and for all Spanish speakers, in the case of nasals: *''uñón'' "large nail" :''unión'' "union" So is the difference between Russian clusters ''ня'' and ''нъя'' (the Russian palatal approximant never becomes �ʝ!--thus the Russian distinction is less "marginal"-->). However, phonetically speaking, the Spanish one is simultaneous alveolo-palatal and dento-alveolar or dento-alveolo-palatal while the Russian soft one is alveolopalatal laminal (except for /rʲ/ which is apical with a secondary articulation). Neither are true palatals like the Irish one. Sometimes the term ''palatal'' is used imprecisely to mean "palatalized". Also, languages that have sequences of consonants and /j/, but no separate palatal or palatalized consonants (e.g.

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

), will often pronounce the sequence with /j/ as a single palatal or palatalized consonant. This is due to the

principle of least effort The principle of least effort is a broad theory that covers diverse fields from evolutionary biology to webpage design. It postulates that animals, people, and even well-designed machines will naturally choose the path of least resistance or "ef ...

and is an example of the general phenomenon of

coarticulation Coarticulation in its general sense refers to a situation in which a conceptually isolated speech sound is influenced by, and becomes more like, a preceding or following speech sound. There are two types of coarticulation: ''anticipatory coarticulat ...

. (On the other hand, Spanish speakers can be careful to pronounce /nj/ as two separate sounds to avoid possible confusion with .)

Examples

For a table of examples of palatal in the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...

, see .

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Palatal Consonant Place of articulation

Characteristics

Distinction from alveolo-palatal, apical palatalized consonants and consonant clusters

Examples

See also

References