Palatals are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex.
Ambiguity of terminology The term palatal is commonly used more loosely for postalveolar consonants that are laminal, palatalized, or both, if there are no true palatals that contrast with them (that is, often referring to alveolo-palatal consonants). This is especially the case with the IPA letters and , which would often be more accurately transcribed as and . Palato-alveolar consonants such as and are also frequently called just palatal.
Palatal consonants are occasionally called domal or cacuminal (), though these terms are usually restricted to retroflex consonants (apico-domal, apico-prepalatal, apico-palatal, subapico-prepalatal, or subapico-palatal), with (alveolo-)palatal restricted to laminal (lamino-domal, lamino-prepalatal, or lamino-palatal) or dorsal (dorso-prepalatal or dorso-palatal) consonants.
Occasionally the term palatal may also be used to refer to palatovelar consonants (that is, palatalized or advanced velar consonants; also sometimes called postpalatal or prevelar consonants). Conversely, occasionally the term palatovelar may be used to refer to more typical palatal consonants.
Characteristics The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant , which ranks among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages. The nasal is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the world's languages,Ian Maddieson (with a chapter contributed by Sandra Ferrari Disner); Patterns of sounds; Cambridge University Press, 1984. in most of which its equivalent obstruent is not the stop , but the affricate . Only a few languages in northern Eurasia, the Americas and central Africa contrast palatal stops with postalveolar affricates—as in Hungarian, Czech, Latvian, Macedonian, 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, alveolo-palatal, palatoalveolar and palatovelar 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 similar articulations
Palatal consonants can be distinguished from apical palatalized consonants and consonant clusters of a consonant and the palatal approximant . The common laminal "palatalized" postalveolars, which rarely contrast with palatals, technically have a unique place of articulation and may be more accurately described as alveolo-palatal consonants. Palatal consonants have their primary articulation toward or in contact with the hard palate, whereas palatalized consonants have a primary articulation in some other area and a secondary articulation involving movement towards the hard palate. Palatal and palatalized consonants are both single phonemes, 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.Although in Old Tibetan the orthography did indicate a distinction between 'gy' and 'g.y' initials, the latter is commonly reconstructed as a cluster.
Irish distinguishes the dorsal palatal nasal (slender ng) from both the laminal alveolo-palatal nasal ("fortis") (slender nn) and the apical palatalized alveolar nasal ("lenis") (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 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 marginally distinguishes palatal consonants from sequences of a dental and the palatal approximant, e.g. in lleísmo Spanish the laterals ll (/l̠ʲ/→ʎ) and li (/lj/→lj), 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. 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), will often pronounce the sequence with /j/ as a single palatal or palatalized consonant. This is due to the principle of least effort and is an example of the general phenomenon of coarticulation. (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, see .
IPA Description Example Language Orthography IPA Meaning voiceless palatal nasal Iaai 'to dedicate' voiced palatal nasal Malay banyak many voiceless palatal plosive Hungarian hattyú swan voiced palatal plosive Latvian ģimene family voiceless palatal affricate Skolt Sámi sääˊmǩiõll 'Skolt Sami' voiced palatal affricate Skolt Sámi vuõˊlǧǧem 'I leave' voiceless palatal fricative German nicht not voiced palatal fricative Spanish rayo lightning bolt voiceless palatal approximant English huge voiced palatal approximant English yes voiceless palatal lateral affricate Hadza tlhakate 'rhinoceros' voiced palatal lateral affricate Sandawe dlani 'arrow' voiceless palatal lateral fricative Dahalo 'leaf' voiced palatal lateral fricativeJebero 'shotgun' voiced palatal lateral approximant Italian gli the (masculine plural) voiced palatal lateral flapIlgar Mildyagru palatal ejective stop Hausa 'grass' palatal lateral ejective affricateHadza 'bone' () voiceless palatal implosiveNgiti'sorghum' voiced palatal implosive Swahili hujambo hello palatal clicks (many distinct consonants) Nǁng ǂoo man, male
See also Palatalization (phonetics) Palatalization (sound change) Place of articulation Index of phonetics articles
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