Czech vs Tosk Albanian
Sound inventory comparison
What this means for learners
Czech and Tosk Albanian share 24 sounds — roughly 60% of Tosk 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 14 sounds found only in Tosk 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 16 sounds not used in Tosk Albanian. Native Tosk 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.