Labialpalatal

Labialpalatal, or labial-palatal, is a term used in phonetics to describe a place of articulation where both the lips (labial) and the tongue body near the hard palate (palatal) are involved simultaneously. In a labial-palatal articulation the tongue body approaches the palate while the lips are rounded or otherwise constricted, yielding a coordinated, single articulation that combines features of both labial and palatal places of articulation. This is an example of coarticulation or double articulation, rather than two separate sequential moves.

The International Phonetic Alphabet represents this place of articulation with the symbol for the labial-palatal approximant, [ɥ]. This sound is considered the prototypical labial-palatal segment and is characterized by a palatal tongue position with lip rounding. In practice, labial-palatal sounds are relatively rare across languages but are widely recognized in phonetic literature as a distinct articulatory category, separate from pure labial, palatal, or other combined articulations.

A commonly cited instance of a labial-palatal sound occurs in French, where the initial sound of huit is transcribed as [ɥit] in careful phonetic analyses. Beyond isolated examples, languages may treat labial-palatal segments as single phonological units or as combinations of palatal configurations with secondary labial features, depending on their phonotactic systems.

Related concepts include other places of articulation such as bilabial and palatal, as well as the broader ideas of coarticulation, labialization, and double articulations (for example, labial-velar).