The palatal or palato-alveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found, as components of words, only in Africa. The tongue is nearly flat, and is pulled back rather than down as in the postalveolar clicks, making a sharper sound than those consonants. The tongue makes an extremely broad contact across the roof of the mouth, making a determination of their place of articulation difficult, but Ladefoged & Traill (1984:18) find that the primary place of articulation is the palate, and say that "there is no doubt that [ǂ] should be described as a palatal sound".
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↑Kirshenbaum assigned ⟨c!⟩ to IPA ⟨ʗ⟩, which he used indifferently for both alveolar ⟨ǃ⟩ and palatal ⟨ǂ⟩ clicks.
