1. changing a consonant sound to be pronounced with the tongue touching or near the hard palate
Usage: linguistics; phonetics

Examples

• The linguist studied how certain dialects are palatalizing the ‘k’ sound before front vowels.
• Children often go through a phase of palatalizing consonants when learning to speak.
• The language change involved palatalizing several stop consonants over centuries.
• Researchers documented the process of palatalizing sounds in the regional accent.
• The phonetic analysis showed speakers were palatalizing the consonant clusters.
• Historical linguistics traces how Latin consonants underwent palatalizing changes.