Voiced palatal approximant
A voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "y" sound in "young".
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ; the equivalent symbol in the Americanist phonetic notation is. In order to not imply that the approximant is spread as the vowel is, it may instead be transcribed. When this sound occurs in the form of a palatal glide it is frequently, but not exclusively, denoted as a superscript j in IPA.
This sound is traditionally called a yod, after its name in Hebrew. This is reflected in the names of certain phonological changes, such as yod-dropping and yod-coalescence.
A palatal approximant is often the semivocalic equivalent of a close front unrounded vowel. They alternate with each other in certain languages, such as French, and in the diphthongs of some languages as and, with the non-syllabic diacritic used in some phonetic transcription systems to represent the same sound.
Phonetic ambiguity and transcription usage
Some languages, however, have a palatal approximant that is unspecified for rounding and so cannot be considered the semivocalic equivalent of either or its rounded counterpart,, which would normally correspond to. An example is Spanish, which distinguishes two palatal approximants: an approximant semivowel, which is always unrounded, and an approximant consonant unspecified for rounding, . Eugenio Martínez Celdrán describes the difference between them as follows :Celdrán also considers that "the IPA shows a lack of precision in the treatment it gives to approximants, if we take into account our understanding of the phonetics of Spanish. and are two different segments, but they have to be labelled as voiced palatal approximant consonants. I think that the former is a real consonant, whereas the latter is a semi-consonant, as it has traditionally been called in Spanish, or a semi-vowel, if preferred. The IPA, though, classifies it as a consonant."
There is a parallel problem with transcribing voiced velar approximants.
In the writing systems used for most languages of Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe, the letter j denotes a palatal approximant, as in German 'year', which is followed by IPA. Although it may be seen as counterintuitive for English-speakers, there are a few words with that orthographical spelling in certain loanwords in English like Hebrew "hallelujah" and German "Jägermeister".
In grammars of Ancient Greek, a palatal approximant, which was lost early in the history of Greek, is sometimes written as, an iota with the inverted breve below, which is the nonsyllabic diacritic or marker of a semivowel.
Features
Features of a voiced palatal approximant:The most common type of this approximant is glide or semivowel. The term glide emphasizes the characteristic of movement of from the vowel position to a following vowel position. The term semivowel emphasizes that, although the sound is vocalic in nature, it is not 'syllabic'. For a description of the approximant consonant variant used e.g. in Spanish, see above.
The otherwise identical post-palatal variant is articulated slightly behind the hard palate, making it sound slightly closer to the velar.