What this means for learners
MORO and Javanese share 22 sounds — roughly 67% of Javanese's inventory overlaps with MORO. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 11 sounds found only in Javanese represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for MORO 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, MORO has 7 sounds not used in Javanese. Native Javanese speakers learning MORO 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.