Only in IRISH 60
What this means for learners
IRISH and Kharia share 9 sounds — roughly 13% of Kharia's inventory overlaps with IRISH. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 38 sounds found only in Kharia represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for IRISH 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, IRISH has 60 sounds not used in Kharia. Native Kharia speakers learning IRISH 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.