Palatal consonant

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.

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

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
Xsampa-J.png	palatal nasal	French	agneau	[]	lamb
Xsampa-c.png	voiceless palatal plosive	Hungarian	hattyú	[]	swan
Xsampa-Jslash.png	voiced palatal plosive	Margi		[]	hump of a cow
Xsampa-C2.png	voiceless palatal fricative	German	nicht	[]	not
Xsampa-jslash2.png	voiced palatal fricative	Spanish	yema	[]	egg yolk
Xsampa-j2.png	palatal approximant	English	yes	[]	yes
Xsampa-L2.png	lateral palatal approximant	Italian	gli	[]	the (masculine plural)
Xsampa-Jslash_lessthan.png	voiced palatal implosive

See also

* Place of articulation
* List of phonetics topics

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