   in linguistics, palatalisation  or palatisation may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate. in describing the phonetics of an existing language (i.e., in synchronic descriptions), a palatalised consonant is one pronounced with a palatal secondary articulation. this means that the consonant is pronounced as if followed very closely by the sound  (a palatal approximant, like the sound of "y" in "yellow"). for example, in the polish word kiedy ("when"), the letters ki represent a palatalised , indicated in ipa notation as , with a superscript "j". this sound is similar to the combination of "k" and "y" in english "thank you". the other meaning of palatalisation is encountered in historical linguistics, and refers to a sound change in which a consonant's place of articulation becomes closer to the palatal position. this change is often triggered by a following  sound or a front vowel. for example, in italian, before the front vowels e and i, the letter c (which otherwise represents , a velar consonant), has come to be pronounced as the voiceless affricate , like english "ch" (see hard and soft c). palatalisation of both types is widespread across languages in the world, though its actual manifestation varies. in some languages, such as the slavic languages, palatal or palatalised consonants are frequently referred to as soft consonants, with others called hard consonants. the term palatalised vowel is also sometimes used, to refer to a vowel that has become fronter or closer. ==types== in technical terms, palatalisation refers to one of several things: *a phonetic term of the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate and the alveolar ridge during the articulation of the consonant. such consonants are phonetically palatalised, and in the international phonetic alphabet (ipa) they are indicated by a superscript , as with  for a palatalised [t].prior to 1989, several palatalised consonants were represented by curly-tailed variants in the ipa, e.g.,  for  and  for . see also palatal hook. *a common [[assi
Assimilation_(linguistics) Historical_linguistics