Only in NENETS 24
What this means for learners
NENETS and Atayal share 11 sounds — roughly 31% of Atayal's inventory overlaps with NENETS. 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 Atayal represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for NENETS 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, NENETS has 24 sounds not used in Atayal. Native Atayal speakers learning NENETS 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.