In using the Latin alphabet for Uralic languages, palatalization is typically denoted with an acute accent, as in Võro ⟨ś⟩; an apostrophe, as in Karelian ⟨s’⟩; or digraphs in j, as in the Savo dialect of Finnish, ⟨sj⟩.
Palatalization is a part of the Estonian literary language and is an essential feature in Võro, as well as Veps, Karelian and other eastern Finnic languages.
He was born in Cork and was educated at Queen's College Cork (now University College Cork), then went to Germany for advanced studies in Celtic languages, working with Heinrich Zimmer at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (now the Humboldt University of Berlin) and later with Rudolf Thurneysen at the University of Freiburg, where he wrote his dissertation on palatalization in 1906.
Their meaning remains the most controversial aspect of rime table phonology, but is believed to indicate palatalization (transcribed as the presence or absence of -j- or -i-), retroflex features, vowel quality (high vs. low or front vs. back) or some combination of these.