What is "palatalization"

n. 1 (context linguistics uncountable English) The state or quality of being palatalized, of pronounce a sound with the tongue against the palate of the mouth that normally is not. 2 (context linguistics countable English) An instance of pronunciation in which a sound is palatalized.

In linguistics, palatalization (, also ) or palatization refers to a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. A consonant pronounced this way is called a palatalized consonant. Palatalized consonants have palatal secondary articulation, or two places of articulation, one of which is palatal. They contrast with palatal consonants, which have palatal primary articulation.

Palatalized consonants are pronounced as if followed very closely by the palatal approximant , the sound of y in yellow. For example, in the Polish word kiedy "when", the letters ki represent a palatalized , transcribed as . This sound is similar to the combination of k and y in English thank you.

Palatalization may refer to:

• Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation
• Palatalization (sound change), the sound change triggered by or resulting in a palatal consonant or front vowel