What this means for learners
Nootka and Kabardian share 29 sounds — roughly 46% of Kabardian's inventory overlaps with Nootka. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 34 sounds found only in Kabardian represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Nootka 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, Nootka has 18 sounds not used in Kabardian. Native Kabardian speakers learning Nootka 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.