The voiceless palatal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in some vocal languages.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨c⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is c. If distinction is necessary, the voiceless alveolo-palatal plosive may be transcribed as ⟨c̟⟩ (advanced ⟨c⟩) or ⟨t̠ʲ⟩ (retracted and palatalized ⟨t⟩), but these are essentially equivalent, because the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue.

This may be considered appropriate when the place of articulation needs to be specified and the distinction between plosive and affricate is not contrastive.

There is also the voiceless post-palatal plosive[1] in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical palatal consonant, though not as back as the prototypical velar consonant.

The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as ⟨c̠⟩ (retracted ⟨c⟩) or ⟨k̟⟩ (advanced ⟨k⟩).