What this means for learners
Darkhat and Luganda share 19 sounds — roughly 49% of Luganda's inventory overlaps with Darkhat. 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 Luganda represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Darkhat 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, Darkhat has 20 sounds not used in Luganda. Native Luganda speakers learning Darkhat 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.