Only in Nepali 48
What this means for learners
Nepali and Kharia share 26 sounds — roughly 35% of Kharia's inventory overlaps with Nepali. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 21 sounds found only in Kharia represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Nepali 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, Nepali has 48 sounds not used in Kharia. Native Kharia speakers learning Nepali 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.