Palatal consonants are consonant

Consonant

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

s articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate

Hard palate

The hard palate is a thin horizontal bony plate of the skull, located in the roof of the mouth. It spans the arch formed by the upper teeth.It is formed by the palatine process of the maxilla and horizontal plate of palatine bone....

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

Retroflex consonant

A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...

.

Characteristics

The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant [j], which ranks as overall, among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages. The nasal

Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...

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

Obstruent

An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....

 is not the plosive [c], but the affricate

Affricate consonant

Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...

 t͡ʃ. Only a few languages in northern Eurasia, the Americas and central Africa contrast palatal plosives with postalveolar affricates - as in Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

, Czech

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

, Latvian

Latvian language

Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...

, Slovak

Slovak language

Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...

, Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

 and Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

.

Consonants with other primary articulations may be palatalized

Palatalization

In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....

, that is, accompanied by the raising of the tongue surface towards the hard palate. For example, English [ʃ] (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

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

, alveolo-palatal

Alveolo-palatal consonant

In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar sounds, usually fricatives and affricates, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate...

, palatoalveolar and palatovelar consonants are commonly grouped as palatals, since these categories rarely contrast with true palatals. Sometimes palatalized alveolars

Alveolar consonant

Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...

 or dentals can be analyzed in this manner as well.

Palatal vs. palatalized vs. sequences with /j/

It is important to distinguish between true palatal consonants, palatalized consonants, and sequences of a consonant and a /j/. Palatal consonants have their primary articulation toward or in contact with the hard palate

Hard palate

The hard palate is a thin horizontal bony plate of the skull, located in the roof of the mouth. It spans the arch formed by the upper teeth.It is formed by the palatine process of the maxilla and horizontal plate of palatine bone....

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

Secondary articulation

Secondary articulation refers to co-articulated consonants where the two articulations are not of the same manner. The approximant-like secondary articulation is weaker than the primary, and colors it rather than obscuring it...

 involving movement towards the hard palate. Palatal and palatalized consonants are both single phonemes, whereas a sequence of a consonant and /j/ is logically two phonemes.

Some languages have more than one of the above types of consonants, for example:

• Irish
  Irish phonology
  The phonology of the Irish language varies from dialect to dialect; there is no standard pronunciation of the language. Therefore, this article focuses on phenomena that pertain generally to most or all dialects, and on the major differences among the dialects...
  
   has both a palatal nasal
  Palatal nasal
  The 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 of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J...
  
   /ɲ/ and a palatalized alveolar nasal
  Alveolar nasal
  The 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 is n....
  
   /nʲ/. In fact, some conservative Irish dialects have two palatalized alveolar nasal consonants, distinguished as "fortis
  Fortis and lenis
  In linguistics, fortis and lenis are terms generally used to refer to groups of consonants that are produced with greater and lesser energy, respectively, such as in energy applied, articulation, etc....
  
  " (apical
  Apical
  Apical, from the Latin apex meaning to be at the apex or tip, may refer to:*Apical , an anatomical term of location for features associated with the base of an organism or structure...
  
   and somewhat lengthened) vs. "lenis" (laminal).
• Spanish
  Spanish phonology
  This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For historical development of the sound system see History of Spanish...
  
   has both a palatal nasal
  Palatal nasal
  The 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 of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J...
  
   /ɲ/ and a sequence /nj/, distinguished e.g. in uñón /uɲon/ "large nail" (of the finger or toe) vs. unión /unjon/ "union".
• Russian
  Russian phonology
  This article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect . For discussion of other dialects, see Russian dialects...
  
   has a three-way distinction between palatalized consonants, palatalized consonants followed by /j/, and non-palatalized consonants followed by /j/.

Note that 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 language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

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

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, even well designed machines will naturally choose the path of least resistance or "effort". It is closely related to many other similar...

 and is an example of the general phenomenon of coarticulation

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...

. (On the other hand, Spanish speakers are very often careful to pronounce /nj/ as two separate sounds to avoid possible confusion with /ɲ/.)

Palatal consonant in IPA

The palatal consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

 are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	palatal nasal Palatal nasal The 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 of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J...	French French language French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...	agneau	[aɲo]	lamb
	voiceless palatal plosive Voiceless palatal plosive The voiceless palatal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is c....	Hungarian Hungarian language Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....	hattyú	[hɒcːuː]	swan
	voiced palatal plosive Voiced palatal plosive The voiced palatal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨⟩, a barred dotless ⟨j⟩ , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\.The sound does not exist as a phoneme in English, but is...	Latvian Latvian language Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...	ģimene	[ɟimene]	family
	voiceless palatal fricative Voiceless palatal fricative The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The symbol ç is the letter c with a cedilla, as used to spell French words such as façade...	German German language German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....	nicht	[nɪçt]	not
	voiced palatal fricative	Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...	yema	[ʝema]	egg yolk
	palatal approximant Palatal approximant The palatal approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is '...	English English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...	yes	[jɛs]	yes
	palatal lateral approximant Palatal lateral approximant The palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a rotated lowercase letter ⟨y⟩ , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is L.-Features:Features of the palatal lateral...	Italian Italian language Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...	gli	[ʎi]	the (masculine plural)
	voiced palatal implosive Voiced palatal implosive The voiced palatal implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\_<...	Swahili Swahili language Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...	hujambo	[huʄambo]	hello
	palatal click Palatal click The palato-alveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa. They are commonly called palatal clicks.The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the place of articulation of these sounds is , a pipe...	Nǁng	ǂoo	[ǂoo]	man Man The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole... , male Male Male refers to the biological sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilization...