Only in Nepali 39
Shared sounds 35
What this means for learners
Nepali and Telugu share 35 sounds — roughly 47% of Telugu'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 33 sounds found only in Telugu 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 39 sounds not used in Telugu. Native Telugu 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.