palatalization, in phonetics, the production of consonants with the blade, or front, of the tongue drawn up farther toward the roof of the mouth (hard palate) than in their normal pronunciation. Palatalized consonants in Russian are pronounced as if attempting simultaneously to pronounce a particular consonant and a y sound; in English, the ny in “canyon” approximates a palatalized sound. Palatalized consonants may be distinguished from palatal consonants, in which the front of the tongue and the hard palate form the primary articulation.
Palatalization also refers to the process of sound change in which a nonpalatal consonant, like k, changes to a palatal consonant, like ch or sh; e.g., French chaîne (pronounced with an initial sh sound) developed from Latin catena (pronounced with an initial k sound).