Only in Lithuanian 36
What this means for learners
Lithuanian and Russian share 24 sounds — roughly 40% of Russian's inventory overlaps with Lithuanian. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 18 sounds found only in Russian represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Lithuanian 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, Lithuanian has 36 sounds not used in Russian. Native Russian speakers learning Lithuanian 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.