What this means for learners
HIXKARYANA and Asmat share 12 sounds — roughly 52% of Asmat's inventory overlaps with HIXKARYANA. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 7 sounds found only in Asmat represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for HIXKARYANA 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, HIXKARYANA has 11 sounds not used in Asmat. Native Asmat speakers learning HIXKARYANA 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.