What this means for learners
Bardi and Kota share 17 sounds — roughly 41% of Kota's inventory overlaps with Bardi. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 24 sounds found only in Kota represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Bardi 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, Bardi has 8 sounds not used in Kota. Native Kota speakers learning Bardi 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.