Voiced palatal approximant

A voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "y" sound in "young".

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨j⟩; the equivalent symbol in the Americanist phonetic notation is ⟨y⟩. In order to not imply that the approximant is spread as the vowel [i] is, it may instead be transcribed ⟨ʝ̞⟩. When this sound occurs in the form of a palatal glide it is frequently, but not exclusively, denoted as a superscript j ⟨ʲ⟩ in IPA.

This sound is traditionally called a yod, after its name in Hebrew. This is reflected in the names of certain phonological changes, such as yod-dropping and yod-coalescence.

A palatal approximant is often the semivocalic equivalent of a close front unrounded vowel [i]. They alternate with each other in certain languages, such as French, and in the diphthongs of some languages as ⟨j⟩ and ⟨i̯⟩, with the non-syllabic diacritic used in some phonetic transcription systems to represent the same sound.