Soft Consonant

软辅音

An impressionistic term sometimes used in the phonetic descriptions of particular languages, referring to a consonant which is palatalized. Russian is a language which has several such soft (as opposed to hard) consonants. In Russian the ь symbol (‘soft sign’) typically marks the palatalization (or ‘softening’) of the preceding consonant.

一个凭印象起的名称，语音学描写有时用来指某些语言中腭化的辅音。俄语有几个这样的软（对立于硬）辅音，符号ь（“软符号”）表示前一个辅音已腭化（或“软化”）。