What this means for learners
Kharia and Karen share 18 sounds — roughly 38% of Karen's inventory overlaps with Kharia. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 21 sounds found only in Karen represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Kharia 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, Kharia has 29 sounds not used in Karen. Native Karen speakers learning Kharia 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.