What this means for learners
Hawaiian and Tagalog share 15 sounds — roughly 54% of Tagalog's inventory overlaps with Hawaiian. 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 Tagalog represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Hawaiian 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, Hawaiian has 4 sounds not used in Tagalog. Native Tagalog speakers learning Hawaiian 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.