What this means for learners
MURSI and Makassar share 15 sounds — roughly 58% of Makassar's inventory overlaps with MURSI. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 8 sounds found only in Makassar represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for MURSI 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, MURSI has 11 sounds not used in Makassar. Native Makassar speakers learning MURSI 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.