What this means for learners
NIMBORAN and Evenki share 11 sounds — roughly 38% of Evenki's inventory overlaps with NIMBORAN. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 18 sounds found only in Evenki represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for NIMBORAN 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, NIMBORAN has 7 sounds not used in Evenki. Native Evenki speakers learning NIMBORAN 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.