Only in NAMA 32
What this means for learners
NAMA and Lak share 9 sounds — roughly 13% of Lak's inventory overlaps with NAMA. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 60 sounds found only in Lak represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for NAMA 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, NAMA has 32 sounds not used in Lak. Native Lak speakers learning NAMA 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.