Hindi-Urdu vs Burushaski
Sound inventory comparison
Only in Hindi-Urdu 70
What this means for learners
Hindi-Urdu and Burushaski share 24 sounds — roughly 26% of Burushaski's inventory overlaps with Hindi-Urdu. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 35 sounds found only in Burushaski represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Hindi-Urdu 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, Hindi-Urdu has 70 sounds not used in Burushaski. Native Burushaski speakers learning Hindi-Urdu 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.