What this means for learners
Maori and Garo share 7 sounds — roughly 27% of Garo's inventory overlaps with Maori. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 19 sounds found only in Garo represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Maori 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, Maori has 13 sounds not used in Garo. Native Garo speakers learning Maori 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.