Only in Burmese 38
What this means for learners
Burmese and Kharia share 18 sounds — roughly 32% of Kharia'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 29 sounds found only in Kharia 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 38 sounds not used in Kharia. Native Kharia 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.