What this means for learners
Korean and Khasi share 23 sounds — roughly 48% of Khasi's inventory overlaps with Korean. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 17 sounds found only in Khasi represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Korean 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, Korean has 25 sounds not used in Khasi. Native Khasi speakers learning Korean 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.