Editing Postalveolar consonant (section)

===Palatalized===
Palatalized postalveolar non-sibilants are usually considered to be alveolo-palatal. Some non-sibilant sounds in some languages are said to be palato-alveolar rather than alveolo-palatal, but in practice, it is unclear if there is any consistent acoustic distinction between the two types of sounds.

In phonological descriptions, alveolo-palatal postalveolar non-sibilants are usually not distinguished as such but are considered to be variants of either [[palatal consonant|palatal]] non-sibilants (such as {{IPA|[c ɲ ʎ]}} or of [[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalized]] [[alveolar consonant|alveolar]] non-sibilants (such as {{IPA|[tʲ nʲ lʲ]}}). Even the two types are often not distinguished among nasals and laterals, as almost all languages have only one palatalized/palatal nasal or lateral in their phonemic inventories. For example, the sound described as a "palatal lateral" in various [[Romance language]]s and often indicated as {{IPA|/ʎ/}} is most often alveolo-palatal {{IPA|[ḻʲ]}} (like in [[Catalan language|Catalan]] and [[Italian language|Italian]]) and sometimes a palatalized alveolar {{IPA|[lʲ]}}, such as in some northern [[Brazilian Portuguese]] dialects.

The IPA does not have specific symbols for alveolo-palatal non-sibilants, but they can be denoted using the advanced diacritic like {{angbr IPA|c̟ ɲ̟ ʎ̟}}. [[Sinology|Sinologists]] often use special symbols for alveolo-palatal non-sibilants, {{angbr IPA|ȶ ȵ ȴ}}, created by analogy with the curls used to mark alveolo-palatal sibilants. However, the actual sounds indicated using these symbols are often palatal or palatalized alveolar rather than alveolo-palatal, like the variation for symbols like {{IPA|[ɲ ʎ]}}. The decision to use the special alveolo-palatal symbols in sinology is largely based on distributional similarities between the sounds in question and the alveolo-palatal sibilants, which are prominent in many [[Languages of East Asia|East Asian languages]].

<!--However, a few languages distinguish alveolo-palatal sounds from other palatalized non-sibilants in the dental-to-palatal region. Many conservative dialects of [[Irish language|Irish]] in fact have a three-way distinction among palatalized nasals between dorsal palatal {{IPA|[ɲ]}}, laminal alveolo-palatal {{IPA|[ṉʲ]}}, and apical palatalized alveolar {{IPA|[nʲ]}}. That is typical with oppositions among similar sounds in a single language, the sounds being maximally different in that each one differs both in the point of contact on the tongue (dorsal vs. laminal vs. apical) and the roof of the mouth (palatal vs. postalveolar vs. alveolar from all others). The other dialects have lost one of the two palatalized coronals but still have a two-way distinction. A similar distinction between palatal {{IPA|[ɲ]}} and alveolo-palatal {{IPA|[ṉʲ]}} exists in some nonstandard forms of [[Malayalam language|Malayalam]].-->