Palatalization (phonetics)

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In phonetics, palatalization ( , US also ) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by affixing a superscript j, ⟨ʲ⟩, to the base letter. Palatalization is prevalent in Slavic languages such as Russian and Bulgarian; Uralic languages such as Estonian, Karelian, Veps, Enets and Mansi; Northwest Caucasian languages such as Abkhaz; and other various languages such as Irish, Lithuanian, Marshallese and Kashmiri. In the Anglosphere, palatalization is frequently associated with Eastern-European accents, due in part to depictions within popular media. Palatalization is not phonemic in English. A similar approximation can be found in the distinction between such words as "coot" (/kuːt/) and "cute" (/kjuːt/), though the latter treats the /k/ and /j/ as two separate phonemes, whereas palatalization would involve...

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