What this means for learners
Gilyak and Kabardian share 22 sounds — roughly 35% of Kabardian's inventory overlaps with Gilyak. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 41 sounds found only in Kabardian represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Gilyak 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, Gilyak has 22 sounds not used in Kabardian. Native Kabardian speakers learning Gilyak 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.