This is not an example of the complete series of palatalized consonants in Russian.
Rather, it allows a palatalized consonant to be contrasted not only with the corresponding plain
consonant, but also with a sequence of consonant + [ j ].
pot ("sweat")
pʲotr ("Peter")
pjot ("he drinks")
Phonemic Differences in Russian l-Sounds
See also British English with non-contrastive light and dark /l/
Palatalized (light)
Velarized (dark)
dalʲ ("faraway place")
daɫ ("gave")
Audio Source:
Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, LMU Munich.
References
Ladefoged, P. / Maddieson, I. (2008): The Sounds of the World's Languages. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
