Voiced palatal stop


The voiced palatal stop, or voiced palatal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound in some vocal languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is, a barred dotless that was initially created by turning the type for a lowercase letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\.
If the distinction is necessary, the voiced alveolo-palatal stop may be transcribed, or , but they are essentially equivalent since the contact includes both the blade and body of the tongue. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are J\_+ and d_-' or d_-_j, respectively. There is also a non-IPA letter , used especially in Sinological circles.
is a less common sound worldwide than the voiced postalveolar affricate because it is difficult to get the tongue to touch just the hard palate without also touching the back part of the alveolar ridge. It is also common for the symbol to be used to represent a palatalized voiced velar stop or palato-alveolar/alveolo-palatal affricates, as in Indic languages. That may be considered appropriate when the place of articulation needs to be specified, and the distinction between stop and affricate is not contrastive.
There is also the voiced post-palatal stop in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back than the place of articulation of the prototypical voiced palatal stop but not as back as the prototypical voiced velar stop. The IPA does not have a separate symbol, which can be transcribed as, , or . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are J\_- and g_+, respectively.
Especially in broad transcription, the voiced post-palatal stop may be transcribed as a palatalized voiced velar stop.

Features

Features of the voiced palatal stop:
The otherwise identical post-palatal variant is articulated slightly behind the hard palate, making it sound slightly closer to the velar.

Occurrence

Palatal or alveolo-palatal

Post-palatal

Variable