Palatal fricative
A palatal fricative is a type of fricative consonant that is also a palatal consonant, i.e. pronounced with the body of the tongue in contact with the hard palate. The two main types of palatal fricatives are:
Palatal fricatives are rare phonemes, especially the voiced palatal fricative, but they occur somewhat more often as allophones. They may occur as allophones of velar fricatives in the vicinity of front vowels, or as alternants of palatal approximants.
