Only in Kannada 36
What this means for learners
Kannada and Dafla share 11 sounds — roughly 23% of Dafla's inventory overlaps with Kannada. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 16 sounds found only in Dafla represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Kannada 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, Kannada has 36 sounds not used in Dafla. Native Dafla speakers learning Kannada 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.