Effect on preceding consonant Front vowel

in history of many languages, example french , japanese, front vowels have altered preceding velar or alveolar consonants, bringing place of articulation towards palatal or postalveolar. change can allophonic variation, or can have become phonemic.

this historical palatalization reflected in orthographies of several european languages, including c , g of romance languages, k , g in norwegian, swedish, faroese , icelandic, , κ , γ , χ in greek. english follows french pattern, without regularity. however, native or borrowed words affected palatalization, english has altered spelling after pronunciation (examples include cheap, church, cheese, churn *k, , yell, yarn, yearn, yeast *ɡ.)