Only in Lak 45
What this means for learners
Lak and Armenian share 24 sounds — roughly 35% of Armenian's inventory overlaps with Lak. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 13 sounds found only in Armenian represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Lak 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, Lak has 45 sounds not used in Armenian. Native Armenian speakers learning Lak 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.