What this means for learners
Bemba and Lak share 13 sounds — roughly 19% of Lak'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 56 sounds found only in Lak 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 12 sounds not used in Lak. Native Lak 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.