What this means for learners
Alabama and Hawaiian share 14 sounds — roughly 67% of Hawaiian's inventory overlaps with Alabama. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 5 sounds found only in Hawaiian represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Alabama 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, Alabama has 7 sounds not used in Hawaiian. Native Hawaiian speakers learning Alabama 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.