Only in Balinese 1
What this means for learners
Mandingo and Balinese share 23 sounds — roughly 68% of Balinese's inventory overlaps with Mandingo. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 1 sound found only in Balinese represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Mandingo 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, Mandingo has 11 sounds not used in Balinese. Native Balinese speakers learning Mandingo 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.