Shared sounds 40
What this means for learners
Marathi and Kannada share 40 sounds — roughly 73% of Kannada's inventory overlaps with Marathi. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 7 sounds found only in Kannada represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Marathi 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, Marathi has 15 sounds not used in Kannada. Native Kannada speakers learning Marathi 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.