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Consonants with other primary articulations may be palatalized, that is, accompanied by the raising of the tongue surface towards the hard palate. For example, English (spelled sh) has such a palatal component, although its primary articulation involves the tip of the tongue and the upper gum (this type of articulation is called palatoalveolar).
In phonology, alveolo-palatal, palatoalveolar and palatovelar consonants are commonly grouped as palatals, since these categories rarely contrast with true palatals. Sometimes palatalized alveolars or dentals can be analyzed in this manner as well.
Some languages have more than one of the above types of consonants, for example: Irish has both a palatal nasal and a palatalized alveolar nasal . In fact, some conservative Irish dialects have two palatalized alveolar nasal consonants, distinguished as "fortis" (apical and somewhat lengthened) vs. "lenis" (laminal). Spanish has both a palatal nasal and a sequence /nj/, distinguished e.g. in uñón "large nail" (of the finger or toe) vs. unión "union".
Note that sometimes the term "palatal" is used imprecisely to mean "palatalized". Also, languages that have sequences of consonants and /j/, but no separate palatal or palatalized consonants (e.g. English), will often pronounce the sequence with /j/ as a single palatal or palatalized consonant. This is due to the principle of least effort and is an example of the general phenomenon of coarticulation. (On the other hand, Spanish speakers are very often careful to pronounce /nj/ as two separate sounds to avoid possible confusion with .)
{|class=wikitable |- ! rowspan="2" | IPA ! rowspan="2" | Description ! colspan="4" | Example |- ! Language ! Orthography ! IPA ! Meaning |- ! | palatal nasal | French | agneau | | |- ! | voiceless palatal plosive | Hungarian | hattyú | | |- ! | voiced palatal plosive | Latvian | ģimene | | |- ! | voiceless palatal fricative | German | nicht | | |- ! | voiced palatal fricative | Spanish | yema | | |- ! | palatal approximant | English | yes | | |- ! | palatal lateral approximant | Italian | gli | | (masculine plural) |- ! | voiced palatal implosive | Swahili | hujambo | | |- ! | palatal click | Nǀu | ǂoo | | man, male |}
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