What this means for learners
MABA and Standard Malay share 21 sounds — roughly 70% of Standard Malay's inventory overlaps with MABA. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 9 sounds found only in Standard Malay represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for MABA 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, MABA has 8 sounds not used in Standard Malay. Native Standard Malay speakers learning MABA 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.