Depalatisation

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The process of removing palatalization from sounds or letters in language; a phonetic or phonological change reversing the articulation involving the palate
2. A linguistic phenomenon involving the elimination of palatal features in speech sounds, often to simplify or modify the pronunciation within a language
3. The act or result of changing palatalized consonants into non-palatalized ones, affecting the way words are pronounced or transcribed in linguistic contexts

Etymology: Latin "palatum" meant the roof of the mouth, and English "palatal" comes from that root. A palatal sound is made by raising the middle of the tongue toward the hard palate, as in the initial sound of "yes." Palatalisation, the process by which a consonant acquires this raised-tongue quality, is a technical term of modern phonetics, coined from the classical root to name a change that linguists needed to describe. Depalatalisation is that process reversed. It adds the prefix "de-", from Latin meaning "away" or "down," to the existing term, so it names the loss of palatal articulation. Linguists use it to describe sound changes in which a consonant that was once palatal becomes plain again, a change documented in the histories of several languages.

Synonyms: depalatalization

Antonyms: palatalization