Palato-alveolar consonants

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Places of articulation

Labial

Bilabial

Labial-velar

Labial-alveolar

Labiodental

Bidental

Coronal

Linguolabial

Interdental

Dental

Alveolar

Apical

Laminal

Postalveolar

Alveolo-palatal

Retroflex

Dorsal

Palatal

Labial-palatal

Velar

Uvular

Uvular-epiglottal

Radical

Pharyngeal

Epiglotto-pharyngeal

Epiglottal

Glottal

In phonetics, palato-alveolar (or palatoalveolar) consonants are postalveolar consonants, nearly always sibilants, that are weakly palatalized with a domed (bunched-up) tongue. They are common sounds cross-linguistically and occur in English words such as ship and chip.

The fricatives are transcribed ⟨ʃ⟩ (voiceless) and ⟨ʒ⟩ (voiced) in the International Phonetic Alphabet, while the corresponding affricates are ⟨tʃ⟩ (voiceless) and ⟨dʒ⟩ (voiced). (For the affricates, tied symbols ⟨t͡ʃ⟩ ⟨d͡ʒ⟩ or unitary Unicode symbols ⟨ʧ⟩ ⟨ʤ⟩ are sometimes used instead, especially in languages that make a distinction between an affricate and a sequence of plosive + fricative.) Examples of words with these sounds in English are shin [ʃ], chin [tʃ], gin [dʒ] and vision [ʒ] (in the middle of the word).

Palato-alveolar consonants can articulated either with the tip or blade of the tongue, and are correspondingly called apical or laminal,. Speakers of English use both variants, and it does not appear to significantly affect the sound of the consonants.

Similarity to other sounds

Main article: Postalveolar consonant

These sounds are similar to the alveolo-palatal sibilants [ɕ] [ʑ] and to the retroflex sibilants [ʂ] [ʐ], all of which are postalveolar consonants. In palato-alveolars the front of the body of the tongue is domed, in that the front of the tongue moves partway towards the palate, giving the consonant a weakly palatalized sound. They differ from other postalveolars in the extent of palatalization, intermediate between the fully palatalized alveolo-palatas and the unpalatalized retroflexes.

It is generally only within sibilants that a palato-alveolar articulation is distinguished. In certain languages nasals or laterals may be said to be palato-alveolar,^{[citation needed]} but it is unclear if such sounds can be consistently distinguished from alveolo-palatals and palatalized alveolars. Even in the case of sibilants, palato-alveolars are often described simply as "post-alveolars" or even as "palatals", since they do not contrast with these sounds in most languages.

Palato-alveolar consonants in the IPA

The two palato-alveolar fricatives identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet, and their common affricate homologues, are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
File:Xsampa-S2.png	Voiceless palato-alveolar fricative	English	shin	[Template:IPA bold dark redɪn]	shin
File:Xsampa-Z2.png	Voiced palato-alveolar fricative	English	vision	[vɪTemplate:IPA bold dark redən]	vision
File:IPA voiceless postalveolar affricate.png	Voiceless palato-alveolar affricate	English	chin	[Template:IPA bold dark redɪn]	chin
File:IPA voiced postalveolar affricate.png	Voiced palato-alveolar affricate	English	gin	[Template:IPA bold dark redɪn]	gin

See also

• Place of articulation
• Postalveolar consonant
• Alveolo-palatal consonant
• Retroflex consonant
• Hush consonant
• List of phonetics topics