What this means for learners
Ket and Khasi share 16 sounds — roughly 40% of Khasi's inventory overlaps with Ket. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 24 sounds found only in Khasi represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Ket 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, Ket has 16 sounds not used in Khasi. Native Khasi speakers learning Ket 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.