Shared sounds 34
What this means for learners
Kwakiutl and Haida share 34 sounds — roughly 62% of Haida's inventory overlaps with Kwakiutl. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 16 sounds found only in Haida represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Kwakiutl 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, Kwakiutl has 21 sounds not used in Haida. Native Haida speakers learning Kwakiutl 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.