Palatalization (phonetics)

"Pure" palatalization is a modification to the articulation of a consonant, where the middle of the tongue is raised, and nothing else.

In Russian, both plain and palatalized consonant phonemes are found in words like большой [bɐlʲˈʂoj] ⓘ, царь [tsarʲ] ⓘ and Катя [ˈkatʲə] ⓘ.

In a few languages, including Skolt Sami and many of the Central Chadic languages, palatalization is a suprasegmental feature that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable, and it may cause certain vowels to be pronounced more front and consonants to be slightly palatalized.

Prior to 1989, a subscript diacritic was used in the IPA: ⟨ᶀ ᶈ ᶆ ᶂ ᶌ ƫ ᶁ ᶇ ᶊ ᶎ ᶅ 𝼓 ᶉ 𝼖 𝼕 ᶄ ᶃ 𝼔 ᶍ ꞕ⟩, apart from two palatalized fricatives which were written instead with curly-tailed variants, namely ⟨ʆ⟩ for [ʃʲ] and ⟨ʓ⟩ for [ʒʲ].

Because it is allophonic, palatalization of this type does not distinguish words and often goes unnoticed by native speakers.

These shifts in primary place of articulation are examples of the sound change of palatalization.

Palatalized consonants appear at the end of the word, and mark the plural in nouns and adjectives, and the second person singular in verbs.

The interpretation commonly taken, however, is that an underlying morpheme |-i| palatalizes the consonant and is subsequently deleted.

Phonetic palatalization of a consonant sometimes causes surrounding vowels to change by coarticulation or assimilation.

Irish and Scottish Gaelic have pairs of palatalized (slender) and unpalatalized (broad) consonant phonemes.

[4][5] Yōon are Japanese moras formed with an added [j] sound between the initial consonant and the vowel.

In the Marshallese language, each consonant has some type of secondary articulation (palatalization, velarization, or labiovelarization).

In many parts of Northern Norway and many areas of Møre og Romsdal, for example, the words /hɑnː/ ('hand') and /hɑnʲː/ ('he') are differentiated only by the palatalization of the final consonant.