Palatal consonant

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Palatal consonant

Palatal consonants are consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx....
s articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate

Hard palate

The hard palate is a thin horizontal bone 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

In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. The tongue is placed behind the alveolar ridge, and may even be curled back to touch the palate: that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar consonant to palatal consonant region of the mouth....
.

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

Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
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. In phonetics, Manner of articulation may be divided into two large classes, obstruents and sonorants....
is not the plosive , but the affricate

Affricate consonant

Affricate consonants begin as stop consonants but release as a fricative consonant rather than directly into the following vowel....

Voiceless postalveolar affricate

The voiceless palato-alveolar affricate or domed postalveolar affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech communication languages....
.

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Palatal consonants are consonant

Consonant

Hard palate

Retroflex consonant

Nasal consonant

Obstruent

Affricate consonant

Affricate consonants begin as stop consonants but release as a fricative consonant rather than directly into the following vowel....

Voiceless postalveolar affricate

The voiceless palato-alveolar affricate or domed postalveolar affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech communication languages....
. Only a few languages in northern Eurasia, the Americas and central Africa contrast palatal plosives with postalveolar affricates - the only common ones being Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic languages unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries....
, 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 Czech people worldwide....
, Slovak

Slovak language

The Slovak language , sometimes incorrectly called ?Slovakian?, is an Indo-European languages that belongs to the West Slavic languages .The Czech and Slovak languages are Mutual intelligibility which means that even after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia Czech may be used in all official proceedings and documents in Slovakia, and vice ver...
and Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European languages spoken by nearly 6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including the west of the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, and southern Serbia....
.

Warning: the IPA symbols are commonly used, not for palatal stops, but for the palatalized

Palatalization

Palatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
velar

Velar consonant

Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....
stops , or the palatal affricates , or the alveolopalatal

Alveolo-palatal consonant

In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalization postalveolar consonant fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate....
affricates , or even the postalveolar

Postalveolar consonant

Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate ....
affricates . This is an old IPA tradition. True palatal stops are relatively uncommon, so it is a good idea to verify the pronunciation whenever you see in the transcription of a language.

Consonants with other primary articulations may be palatalised
Palatalization

Palatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
, 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). 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
IPA	Description	Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	palatal nasal Palatal nasal The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J....	French French language French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....	agneau	[]	lamb
	voiceless palatal plosive Voiceless palatal plosive The voiceless palatal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech communication 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 languages unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries....	hattyú	[]	swan
	voiced palatal plosive Voiced palatal plosive The voiced palatal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J....	Margi		[]	hump of a cow
	voiceless palatal fricative Voiceless palatal fricative The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C....	German German language German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....	nicht	[]	not
	voiced palatal fricative Voiced palatal fricative The voiced palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j....	Spanish Spanish language Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....	yema	[]	egg yolk
	palatal approximant Palatal approximant The 'palatal approximant' is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ....	English English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...	yes	[]	yes
	palatal lateral approximant Palatal lateral approximant The palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a turned letter "y" , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is L....	Italian Italian language Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....	gli	[]	the (masculine plural)
	voiced palatal implosive Voiced palatal implosive The voiced palatal implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication 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 is the first language of the Swahili people , who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands....	hujambo	[hu]	hello

Palatal consonant

See also