What this means for learners
EKARI and Makassar share 12 sounds — roughly 52% of Makassar's inventory overlaps with EKARI. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 11 sounds found only in Makassar represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for EKARI 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, EKARI has 3 sounds not used in Makassar. Native Makassar speakers learning EKARI 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.