What this means for learners
MANCHU and Lak share 9 sounds — roughly 13% of Lak's inventory overlaps with MANCHU. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 60 sounds found only in Lak represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for MANCHU 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, MANCHU has 16 sounds not used in Lak. Native Lak speakers learning MANCHU 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.