What this means for learners
Kharia and Kumauni share 24 sounds — roughly 51% of Kumauni'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 18 sounds found only in Kumauni 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 23 sounds not used in Kumauni. Native Kumauni 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.