What this means for learners
MALAKMALAK and SEDANG share 9 sounds — roughly 16% of SEDANG'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 46 sounds found only in SEDANG 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 10 sounds not used in SEDANG. Native SEDANG 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.