Alveolo-palatal consonant facts for kids

Sagittal section of alveolo-palatal fricative

In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants are palatalized postalveolar sounds. They are usually fricatives and affricates. We pronounce them 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 alveolo-palatal consonants are more fully palatalized.

Sibilants

We often use the alveolo-palatal sibilants in the Chinese languages (e.g.Mandarin, Hakka, and Wu), and other languages in the East Asian sprachbund (e.g.Japanese and Korean). Many slavic languages (e.g.Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croatian) also contains alveolo-palatal sibilants. Northwest Caucasian languages (e.g. Abkhaz and Ubykh) also use this consonant. Kinnauri uses an alveolo-palatal nasal. The alveolo-palatal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

Stops, nasals and liquids

The sinological circles sometimes use,, and for alveolo-palatal plosives, nasals and liquids. But the IPA does not accept these symbols. We sometimes use these symbol to represent simple palatal or platalized consonants.

We consider the Polish nasal (represented with the letter ń) to be alveolo-palatal, but not palatal. And the "palatal" consonants of several Indigenous Australian languages are also sometimes judged closer to alveolo-palatal in their articulation.

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