palatal
/ˈpælətəl/
noun
- A speech sound produced with the tongue near or touching the hard palate.
- Learning to produce a palatal can be tricky for beginners.
- In Russian, the soft sign indicates that the preceding consonant is a palatal.
- The teacher asked the class to identify the palatals in the word 'canyon'.
adjective
- Relating to the palate (the roof of the mouth).
- The palatal bone forms part of the hard palate.
- A palatal cleft can cause difficulty with feeding in infants.
- The dentist examined the palatal area for signs of infection.
- In phonetics, describing a speech sound made by raising the tongue toward the hard palate, like the 'y' in 'yes' or the 'ñ' in Spanish.
- The 'sh' sound in English is a palatal fricative.
- Linguists classify the 'y' sound as a palatal approximant.
- Some languages have palatal consonants that English speakers find hard to pronounce.