Alveolo-palatal consonant

In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants are palatalized postalveolar sounds, usually fricatives and affricates, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate. These consonants are similar to palato-alveolar consonants, but are more fully palatalized.

Sibilants

The alveolo-palatal sibilants are often used in the Chinese languages such as Mandarin, Hakka, and Wu, as well as other languages in the East Asian sprachbund, such as Japanese and Korean. Alveolo-palatal sibilants are also a feature of many Slavic languages, such as Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croatian, and of Northwest Caucasian languages, such as Abkhaz and Ubykh. Kinnauri uses an alveolo-palatal nasal. The alveolo-palatal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

Stops, nasals and liquids

Symbols for alveolo-palatal stops (ȶ, ȡ), nasals (ȵ), and liquids (ȴ) are sometimes used, but these are not recognized by the IPA. The same symbols are used by some to represent simple palatal or palatalized consonants.

The Polish nasal represented with the letter ń is considered to be alveolo-palatal rather than palatal. Also the "palatal" consonants of several Indigenous Australian languages are also sometimes judged closer to alveolo-palatal in their articulation.

References

• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.