- Not to be confused with the alveolar clicks. Unicode uses the obsolete description "alveolar click" for the palatal-click letter .
The
palatal or
palato-alveolar clicks are a family of
click consonants found only in
Africa. The tongue is nearly flat, and is pulled back rather than down as in the
postalveolar clicks, making a sharper sound than those consonants. The tongue makes an extremely broad contact across the roof of the mouth, making a determination of their place of articulation difficult, but Ladefoged & Traill (1984:18) find that the primary place of articulation is the palate, and say that "there is no doubt that should be described as a palatal sound".