Only in NAXI 39
What this means for learners
NAXI and Garo share 10 sounds — roughly 20% of Garo's inventory overlaps with NAXI. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 16 sounds found only in Garo represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for NAXI 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, NAXI has 39 sounds not used in Garo. Native Garo speakers learning NAXI 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.