What this means for learners
Alawa and Kunjen share 11 sounds — roughly 39% of Kunjen's inventory overlaps with Alawa. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 17 sounds found only in Kunjen represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Alawa 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, Alawa has 17 sounds not used in Kunjen. Native Kunjen speakers learning Alawa 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.