Only in DAHALO 35
What this means for learners
DAHALO and Swahili share 24 sounds — roughly 41% of Swahili's inventory overlaps with DAHALO. 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 Swahili represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for DAHALO 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, DAHALO has 35 sounds not used in Swahili. Native Swahili speakers learning DAHALO 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.