Only in Mongolian 36
What this means for learners
Mongolian and Dafla share 10 sounds — roughly 22% of Dafla's inventory overlaps with Mongolian. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 17 sounds found only in Dafla represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Mongolian 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, Mongolian has 36 sounds not used in Dafla. Native Dafla speakers learning Mongolian 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.