Talk:Palatal consonant

Voiceless Palatal Plosive Error

There is an error in this example, although I'm not sure exactly what it is. The article says:

   voiceless palatal plosive Korean [cal] 살 jal (="well")

I think the Korean word that is being referred to here is actually 잘 (jal = "well").

(살 would not normally be Romanized as jal, but as sal.)

But I don't think that the consonant ㅈ is accurately described as plosive. I think it is an unvoiced non-plosive palatal consonant. I think the unvoiced plosive consonant would be written ㅊ as in 철 (ch'eol = "iron").

-- Dominus 19:10, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Palatal? Palatalized?

I'm willing to bet money that the Hungarian example is completely wrong. I bet it's palatalized rather than palatal, means, [tʲ] rather than [c]. Anyone been to Hungary lately...?

David Marjanović (... that's the palatalized affricate [tʃʲ]) midnight 2005/8/3

I must admit that when I was in Hungary, these sounds sounded basically postalveolar to my English ears. They are definitely not palatalized alveolar plosives. However, Ladefoged shows clearly that, at least in the tokens he measured, "there is no contact at all on the blade of the tongue" — that is, that these are dorsal (palatal) and not coronal (palatalized) consonants. However, they are frequently made with a degree of affrication, as is common for palatals, and I understand are only plain stops in careful or formal speech. kwami 01:33, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

I have been convinced that they are palatal in Hungarian, but a linguist has explained to me that the [j]-like offglide of e. g. French gn [ɲj͡] must be written separately. (For this reason I've just edited the French and Italian examples.) So you say Hungarian ty and gy don't even obligatorily have that offglide???

David Marjanović (... which is best transcribed as a mere [tɕ͡]) 01:37 CET-summertime 2005/9/10

Yes, [t͡ɕ] is more like it!

(Actually, the tie bar goes between the letters, not after them. If you're using Arial Unicode, it's buggy and won't display correctly, but the symbols should still be typed correctly for an article. Sorry to be pedantic, but it's a mess to try to straighten stuff like this out.)

I don't know that the Hungarian stops don't have an offglide. I've never heard of it, if that means anything.

I have a feeling that many of the examples are oversimplified. However, the transcription [ɲ͡j] is impossible: you cannot have complete closure and partial closure at the same place at the same time. I could see [ɲj]. Actually, Mexican Spanish has [nʲ]; it isn't palatal at all.

Okay for the French, but how do you know that the (Madrid) Spanish and Italian examples are not simple palatals? I'm not saying they are, just that the whole area is rather murky. kwami 04:32, 2005 September 10 (UTC)

I have now heard one Hungarian say [dʲ], so that sound exists in at least one dialect.

You're right about Arial Unicode MS! I'll try to fix that stuff sometime.

The tie bar, the correct usage of which I haven't quite understood, was to indicate that what I wrote [j] is not exactly that, but a [j]-like offglide. Perhaps I was just too pedantic. I'll remove it from the main page. Perhaps I should try to find some obscure diacritic for the [j].

I've had an Italian actually teaching me and some other people how to say gl. It has the offglide. Spanish... the only native speaker I know is a Mexican originally from Oaxaca, and I haven't heard her say [nʲ] so far, though I have hardly heard her speak Spanish at all...

And besides... I wonder if there is any difference between [ɕ] and [ʃʲ]? ~:-|

David 2005/9/27 18:28 CET-summertime

As far I can tell from Ladefoged, [ɕ] = [ʃʲ] = [s̠ʲ] (that is, a palatalized postalveolar), except that, at least in English and French, /ʃ/ is also partially labialized: [ʃʷ̜]. kwami 18:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! I've now also fixed the tie-bar affairs.

Basque is said to have real [c]. I'll need to try to check that out...

David 2005/9/28 00:47 CET-summertime

I took a intro course on Basque, and I thought the tt was a palatalized alveolar. Could be wrong, though, and there is a lot of dialectical diversity. kwami 23:05, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

If it's palatalized, that would explain its use in diminutives...

David 2005/9/29 1:03 CET-summertime

Trill

Is there such thing as a palatal trill? It seems possible, but it is a sort of "difficult" sound. Is it in any language? 68.224.239.145 01:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at the consonant table at IPA. The intention is to represent ever sound made in human language. The space for a palatal trill is left blank in the table. It's not an impossible sound -- those are the ones shaded in gray -- but there's no character to represent it because the linguistic community knows of no language where it occurs. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you.