Shared sounds 31
What this means for learners
Salish and Nootka share 31 sounds — roughly 66% of Nootka's inventory overlaps with Salish. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 16 sounds found only in Nootka represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Salish 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, Salish has 12 sounds not used in Nootka. Native Nootka speakers learning Salish 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.