What this means for learners
Maranungku and Iai share 14 sounds — roughly 27% of Iai's inventory overlaps with Maranungku. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 38 sounds found only in Iai represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Maranungku 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, Maranungku has 10 sounds not used in Iai. Native Iai speakers learning Maranungku 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.