Palatal Consonant - Palatal Vs. Palatalized Vs. Sequences With /j/

Palatal Vs. Palatalized Vs. Sequences With /j/

It is important to distinguish between true palatal consonants, palatalized consonants, and sequences of a consonant and a /j/. Palatal consonants have their primary articulation toward or in contact with the hard palate, whereas palatalized consonants have a primary articulation in some other area and a secondary articulation involving movement towards the hard palate. Palatal and palatalized consonants are both single phonemes, whereas a sequence of a consonant and /j/ is logically two phonemes.

Some languages have more than one of the above types of consonants, for example:

• Irish has both a palatal nasal /ɲ/ and a palatalized alveolar nasal /nʲ/. In fact, some conservative Irish dialects have two palatalized alveolar nasals, distinguished as "fortis" (apical and somewhat lengthened) vs. "lenis" (laminal).
• Spanish has both a palatal nasal /ɲ/ and a sequence /nj/, distinguished e.g. in uñón /uɲon/ "large nail" (of the finger or toe) vs. unión /unjon/ "union".
• Russian has a three-way distinction between palatalized consonants, palatalized consonants followed by /j/, and non-palatalized consonants followed by /j/.

Note that sometimes the term "palatal" is used imprecisely to mean "palatalized". Also, languages that have sequences of consonants and /j/, but no separate palatal or palatalized consonants (e.g. English), will often pronounce the sequence with /j/ as a single palatal or palatalized consonant. This is due to the principle of least effort and is an example of the general phenomenon of coarticulation. (On the other hand, Spanish speakers are very often careful to pronounce /nj/ as two separate sounds to avoid possible confusion with /ɲ/.)