What this means for learners
AHTNA and Kabardian share 17 sounds — roughly 27% of Kabardian's inventory overlaps with AHTNA. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 46 sounds found only in Kabardian represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for AHTNA speakers. The adult brain tends to map unfamiliar sounds onto the closest native equivalent — a process that produces the characteristic "accent" of a second-language speaker. Learning to hear and produce these sounds as distinct requires focused ear training, not just repetition.
Conversely, AHTNA has 18 sounds not used in Kabardian. Native Kabardian speakers learning AHTNA will face the mirror-image challenge with these sounds.
Phoneme inventories from PHOIBLE. Data reflects one documented inventory per language; some variation exists across dialects and sources.