What this means for learners
Bemba and Evenki share 20 sounds — roughly 69% of Evenki's inventory overlaps with Bemba. 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 Evenki represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Bemba 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, Bemba has 5 sounds not used in Evenki. Native Evenki speakers learning Bemba 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.