What this means for learners
Evenki and Mandingo share 24 sounds — roughly 71% of Mandingo's inventory overlaps with Evenki. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 10 sounds found only in Mandingo represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Evenki 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, Evenki has 5 sounds not used in Mandingo. Native Mandingo speakers learning Evenki 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.