What this means for learners
PO-AI and Kharia share 11 sounds — roughly 23% of Kharia's inventory overlaps with PO-AI. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 36 sounds found only in Kharia represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for PO-AI 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, PO-AI has 24 sounds not used in Kharia. Native Kharia speakers learning PO-AI 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.