What this means for learners
Nganasan and Dafla share 14 sounds — roughly 47% of Dafla's inventory overlaps with Nganasan. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 13 sounds found only in Dafla represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Nganasan 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, Nganasan has 16 sounds not used in Dafla. Native Dafla speakers learning Nganasan 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.