If you feel back behind the alveolar ridge, you should find a hard part in the roof of your mouth. This is called the hard palate or just the palate. Sounds produced with the tongue and the palate are called palatals (or alveo-palatals). Examples of palatals are the initial sounds in the words shout and child, which are both voiceless. The “sh” sound is represented as [ʃ] and the “ch” sound is represented as [ʧ]. So, the word shoebrush begins and ends with the voiceless palatal sound [ʃ] and the word church begins and ends with the other voiceless palatal sound [ʧ].

 One of the voiced palatals, represented by the symbol [ʒ], is not very common in English, but can be found as the middle consonant sound in words like treasure and pleasure, or the final sound in rouge. The other voiced palatal is [ʤ], which is the initial sound in words like joke and gem. The word judge and the name George both begin and end with the sound [ʤ] despite the obvious differences in spelling.

One other voiced palatal is the [j] sound used at the beginning of words like you and yet.