Only in NEWARI 21
What this means for learners
NEWARI and Assamese share 11 sounds — roughly 30% of Assamese's inventory overlaps with NEWARI. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 26 sounds found only in Assamese represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for NEWARI 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, NEWARI has 21 sounds not used in Assamese. Native Assamese speakers learning NEWARI 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.