What this means for learners
Auyana and Gadsup share 10 sounds — roughly 50% of Gadsup's inventory overlaps with Auyana. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 9 sounds found only in Gadsup represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Auyana 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, Auyana has 10 sounds not used in Gadsup. Native Gadsup speakers learning Auyana 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.