What this means for learners
Alawa and Maung share 14 sounds — roughly 50% of Maung'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 10 sounds found only in Maung 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 14 sounds not used in Maung. Native Maung 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.