Palatals areconsonantsarticulated with the body of the tongue raised against thehard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are calledretroflex.
The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely commonapproximant[j], which ranks among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages.[1] Thenasal[ɲ] is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the world's languages,[2] in most of which its equivalentobstruent is not the stop[c], but theaffricate[t͡ʃ]. Only a few languages in northern Eurasia, the Americas and central Africa contrast palatal stops withpostalveolar affricates—as inHungarian,Czech,Latvian,Macedonian,Slovak,Turkish andAlbanian.
Consonants with other primary articulations may bepalatalized, that is, accompanied by the raising of the tongue surface towards the hard palate. For example, English[ʃ] (spelledsh) has such a palatal component, although its primary articulation involves the tip of the tongue and the upper gum (this type of articulation is calledpalatoalveolar).
Palatal consonants can be distinguished from apical palatalized consonants and consonant clusters of a consonant and the palatal approximant[j]. The common laminal "palatalized" alveolars, which also contrast with palatals, have a unique place of articulation and should be calledalveolo-palatal consonants. Palatal consonants have theirprimary articulation toward or in contact with thehard palate, whereaspalatalized consonants have a primary articulation in some other area and asecondary articulation involving movement towards the hard palate. Palatal and palatalized consonants are both singlephonemes, whereas a sequence of a consonant and[j] 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.[3]
Irish distinguishes the dorsalpalatal nasal/ɲ/ (slenderng) from both the laminal alveolo-palatal nasal ("fortis")/ȵ/ (slendernn) and the apical palatalizedalveolar nasal ("lenis")/nʲ/ (slendern), nonetheless most modern Irish speakers may either merge the latter two or depalatalize the apical palatalized consonant. So is the difference between the twoMigueleño Chiquitano stops. In both languages alveolo-palatal consonants correspond to thepalatalization or slender of alveolars while palatal consonants correspond to thepalatalization or slender of velars.
Spanish marginally distinguishes palatal consonants from sequences of a dental and the palatal approximant, e.g. inlleísmo Spanish the lateralsll (/l̠ʲ/→ʎ) andly (/lj/→lɟʝ), and for all Spanish speakers, in the case of nasals:
uñón/uȵon/→[uɲ̟on] "large nail"
unión/unjon/→[unɟʝon] "union"
So is the difference between Russian clustersня andнъя (the Russian palatal approximant never becomes [ɟʝ]). However, phonetically speaking, the Spanish one is simultaneous alveolo-palatal and dento-alveolar or dento-alveolo-palatal[4] while the Russiansoft one is alveolopalatal laminal (except for /rʲ/ which is apical with a secondary articulation). Neither are true palatals like the Irish one.
Sometimes the termpalatal 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 theprinciple of least effort and is an example of the general phenomenon ofcoarticulation. (On the other hand, Spanish speakers can be careful to pronounce /nj/ as two separate sounds to avoid possible confusion with/ɲ/.)
