Only in Kabardian 53
What this means for learners
Kabardian and Kharia share 10 sounds — roughly 16% of Kharia's inventory overlaps with Kabardian. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 37 sounds found only in Kharia represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Kabardian 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, Kabardian has 53 sounds not used in Kharia. Native Kharia speakers learning Kabardian 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.