What this means for learners
MBA-NE and Tiv share 22 sounds — roughly 55% of Tiv's inventory overlaps with MBA-NE. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 18 sounds found only in Tiv represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for MBA-NE 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, MBA-NE has 9 sounds not used in Tiv. Native Tiv speakers learning MBA-NE 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.