Alveolo-palatal consonant

In phonetics, alveolo-palatal are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge and the palate, but closer to the palate than for postalveolar consonants. Alveolo-palatal consonants can be found in Chinese languages such as Mandarin, Hakka, and Wu, as well as Abkhaz, Polish, Ubykh, Japanese, and Kinnauri. The alveolo-palatal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	Voiced alveolo-palatal fricative	Hungarian	zseb	['ɛb]	pocket
	Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative	Mandarin	小 (xiǎo)	[ɕiɑu˨˩˦]	small

Note: The table displays only fricatives. Other alveolo-palatal consonants such as stops (ȶ, ȡ), affricates (ʨ, ʥ), nasals (ȵ), and liquids (ȴ) are also possible but less common.

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics