What this means for learners
Mandingo and Kimeru share 25 sounds — roughly 74% of Kimeru'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 2 sounds found only in Kimeru 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 9 sounds not used in Kimeru. Native Kimeru 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.