What this means for learners
DADIBI and Asmat share 11 sounds — roughly 48% of Asmat's inventory overlaps with DADIBI. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 8 sounds found only in Asmat represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for DADIBI 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, DADIBI has 12 sounds not used in Asmat. Native Asmat speakers learning DADIBI 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.