Indonesian vs Hiligaynon
Sound inventory comparison
What this means for learners
Indonesian and Hiligaynon share 23 sounds — roughly 74% of Hiligaynon's inventory overlaps with Indonesian. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 2 sounds found only in Hiligaynon represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Indonesian 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, Indonesian has 8 sounds not used in Hiligaynon. Native Hiligaynon speakers learning Indonesian 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.