Palatalization

It is a general term referring to any articulation involving a movement of the tongue towards the hard palate. It may be used to describe the altered articulation illustrated by k above, but its more common use is in relation to SECONDARY ARTICULATIONS. Here, the primary place of articulation is elsewhere in the mouth; for example, a [t] sound, normally made in ALVEOLAR position, is said to be palatalized if during its articulation the front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate: in the case of [t], the palatalization would be most noticeable when the plosive was released, as a palatal GLIDE would then be heard before the onset of the next main sound. Several languages, such as Russian, have sets of palatalized consonants operating as phonemes. Because of the auditory effect involved, the labels SOFT and HARD are often used to describe the contrasting qualities of palatalized and non-palatalized CONSONANTS respectively. (These labels have no relation to their use in the terms ‘hard palate’ and ‘soft palate’, which are anatomically based) In phonetic TRANSCRIPTION, there are several ways of representing palatalization; for instance  , [t^j ] and [t’] have all been used to represent a palatalized [t].