drego642 wrote:Phonetics question here; on palatalization: (this may be a very basic concept, but for some reason, there's some confusion on my end here) would it be correct, incorrect, or partially correct to say that when a given consonant is palatalized, it is simply pronounced as normal, then followed immediately by a slight [j] sound? As I think I understand it now, a consonant is palatalized when, after articulation, the tongue moves to the palate, thereby creating a small [j] sound at the end of said consonant, merely as a side-effect.
Palatalisation occurs while the first sound is being articulated, where a sequence doesn't (necessarily) imply the overlap. So when you have a sequence of p
j, the body of the tongue's raised while you have the p-closure, and when you release it, the tongue's already moving to whatever the following place of articulation is. When the sequence is pj, the body of the the tongue doesn't raise until the p is releasing.
In practice the two of them are often used interchangeably, unless you're transcribing one of the pesky palatalising languages, even if they're not, technically, interchangeable.
