What this means for learners
Bundjalung and Ket share 7 sounds — roughly 22% of Ket's inventory overlaps with Bundjalung. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 25 sounds found only in Ket represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Bundjalung 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, Bundjalung has 13 sounds not used in Ket. Native Ket speakers learning Bundjalung 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.