noun
- consonant sounds produced by placing the tongue against or near the hard palate
Usage: linguistics; phonetics
Examples
- The palatals in English include the ‘y’ sound in ‘yes’.
- Students of phonetics must learn to identify palatals correctly.
- Many languages have more palatals than English does.
- The linguist explained how palatals are formed in the mouth.
- Russian has several palatals that don’t exist in English.
- She practiced pronouncing the palatals until they sounded natural.