Palatal consonant

Palatals 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.

Ambiguity of terminology

The term palatal is commonly used more loosely for postalveolar consonants that are laminal, palatalized, or both, if there are no true palatals that contrast with them (that is, often referring to alveolo-palatal consonants). This is especially the case with the IPA letters ⟨ɲ⟩ and ⟨ʎ⟩, which would often be more accurately transcribed as ⟨n̠ʲ⟩ and ⟨l̠ʲ⟩. Palato-alveolar consonants such as ⟨ʃ⟩ and ⟨ʒ⟩ are also frequently called just palatal.

Palatal consonants are occasionally called domal or cacuminal ( ), though these terms are usually restricted to retroflex consonants (apico-domal, apico-prepalatal, apico-palatal, subapico-prepalatal, or subapico-palatal), with (alveolo-)palatal restricted to laminal (lamino-domal, lamino-prepalatal, or lamino-palatal) or dorsal (dorso-prepalatal or dorso-palatal) consonants.

Occasionally the term palatal may also be used to refer to palatovelar consonants (that is, palatalized or advanced velar consonants; also sometimes called postpalatal or prevelar consonants). Conversely, occasionally the term palatovelar may be used to refer to more typical palatal consonants.

Characteristics

The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant [j], which ranks 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, in most of which its equivalent obstruent is not the stop [c], but the affricate [t͡ʃ].