What this means for learners
Bhojpuri and Madurese share 26 sounds — roughly 51% of Madurese's inventory overlaps with Bhojpuri. 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 Madurese represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Bhojpuri 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, Bhojpuri has 25 sounds not used in Madurese. Native Madurese speakers learning Bhojpuri 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.