Shared sounds 39
What this means for learners
Akan and Bamana share 39 sounds — roughly 65% of Bamana's inventory overlaps with Akan. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 19 sounds found only in Bamana represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Akan 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, Akan has 21 sounds not used in Bamana. Native Bamana speakers learning Akan 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.