What this means for learners
MALAKMALAK and Lingala share 12 sounds — roughly 55% of Lingala's inventory overlaps with MALAKMALAK. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 10 sounds found only in Lingala represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for MALAKMALAK 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, MALAKMALAK has 7 sounds not used in Lingala. Native Lingala speakers learning MALAKMALAK 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.