Only in Punjabi 38
Shared sounds 35
What this means for learners
Punjabi and Hindi-Urdu share 35 sounds — roughly 37% of Hindi-Urdu's inventory overlaps with Punjabi. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 59 sounds found only in Hindi-Urdu represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Punjabi 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, Punjabi has 38 sounds not used in Hindi-Urdu. Native Hindi-Urdu speakers learning Punjabi 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.