What this means for learners
Karok and Bemba share 16 sounds — roughly 39% of Bemba's inventory overlaps with Karok. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 9 sounds found only in Bemba represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Karok 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, Karok has 25 sounds not used in Bemba. Native Bemba speakers learning Karok 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.