Only in Burmese 29
What this means for learners
Burmese and Javanese share 27 sounds — roughly 48% of Javanese's inventory overlaps with Burmese. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 6 sounds found only in Javanese represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Burmese 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, Burmese has 29 sounds not used in Javanese. Native Javanese speakers learning Burmese 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.