What this means for learners
Chontal and Armenian share 24 sounds — roughly 65% of Armenian's inventory overlaps with Chontal. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 13 sounds found only in Armenian represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Chontal 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, Chontal has 13 sounds not used in Armenian. Native Armenian speakers learning Chontal 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.