What this means for learners
Pashto and Nupe share 25 sounds — roughly 66% of Nupe's inventory overlaps with Pashto. 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 Nupe represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Pashto 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, Pashto has 13 sounds not used in Nupe. Native Nupe speakers learning Pashto 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.