What this means for learners
KLAO and TETUN share 12 sounds — roughly 44% of TETUN's inventory overlaps with KLAO. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 7 sounds found only in TETUN represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for KLAO 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, KLAO has 15 sounds not used in TETUN. Native TETUN speakers learning KLAO 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.