palatal consonant
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A palatal consonant is a sound made by positioning the body of your tongue against the hard palate (the roof of your mouth) while speaking. These consonants appear in many languages around the world and help distinguish different words and meanings from one another.
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Article
Palatals are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex. Palatal sounds are occasionally called domal or cacuminal (/kəˈkjuːmɪnəl/ ), though usually those terms are restricted to retroflex consonants (apico-domal or apico-palatal), with 'palatal' restricted to laminal consonants (lamino-domal or lamino-palatal).
The term 'palatal' is commonly used more loosely for laminal or palatalized post-alveolar sounds, if there are no true palatals that contrast with them. This is especially the case with the IPA letters ⟨ɲ⟩ and ⟨ʎ⟩, which would often be more accurately transcribed as ⟨n̠ʲ⟩ and ⟨l̠ʲ⟩.