Czech vs Gheg Albanian
Sound inventory comparison
What this means for learners
Czech and Gheg Albanian share 25 sounds — roughly 58% of Gheg Albanian's inventory overlaps with Czech. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 18 sounds found only in Gheg Albanian represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Czech 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, Czech has 15 sounds not used in Gheg Albanian. Native Gheg Albanian speakers learning Czech 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.