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{{DEFAULTSORT:Palatal Consonant}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Palatal Consonant}}
[[Category:Palatal consonant]]
[[Category:Palatal consonants]]
[[Category:Place of articulation]]
[[Category:Place of articulation]]

Latest revision as of 05:47, January 5, 2012


Language: Linguistics · Semiotics · Speech

Places of articulation

Palatal consonants 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.


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 [ɲ] is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the world's languages[1], in most of which its equivalent obstruent is not the plosive [c], but the affricate Template:IPAblink. Only a few languages in northern Eurasia, the Americas and central Africa contrast palatal plosives with postalveolar affricates - as in Hungarian, Czech, Latvian, 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 [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, 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.

Palatal vs. palatalized vs. sequences with /j/Edit

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, 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 /j/ is logically two phonemes.

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

  • Irish has both a palatal nasal /ɲ/ and a palatalized alveolar nasal /nʲ/. In fact, some conservative Irish dialects have two palatalized alveolar nasal consonants, distinguished as "fortis" (apical and somewhat lengthened) vs. "lenis" (laminal).
  • Spanish has both a palatal nasal /ɲ/ and a sequence /nj/, distinguished e.g. in uñón /uɲon/ "large nail" (of the finger or toe) vs. unión /unjon/ "union".
  • Russian 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), 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 are very often careful to pronounce /nj/ as two separate sounds to avoid possible confusion with /ɲ/.)

Palatal consonant in IPAEdit

The palatal consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning
File:Xsampa-J.png palatal nasal French agneau [aɲo] lamb
File:Xsampa-c.png voiceless palatal plosive Hungarian hattyú [hɒuː] swan
File:Xsampa-Jslash.png voiced palatal plosive Latvian ģimene [ɟimene] family
File:Xsampa-C2.png voiceless palatal fricative German nicht [nɪçt] not
File:Xsampa-jslash2.png voiced palatal fricative Spanish yema [ʝema] egg yolk
File:Xsampa-j2.png palatal approximant English yes [jɛs] yes
File:Xsampa-L2.png palatal lateral approximant Italian gli [ʎi] the (masculine plural)
File:Xsampa-Jslash lessthan.png voiced palatal implosive Swahili hujambo [huʄambo] hello
File:Xsampa-equalsslash.png palatal click Nǁng ǂoo [ǂoo] man, male

See alsoEdit


  1. Ian Maddieson (with a chapter contributed by Sandra Ferrari Disner); Patterns of sounds; Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-521-26536-3



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