Only in RUTUL 45
What this means for learners
RUTUL and Nootka share 19 sounds — roughly 30% of Nootka's inventory overlaps with RUTUL. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 28 sounds found only in Nootka represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for RUTUL 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, RUTUL has 45 sounds not used in Nootka. Native Nootka speakers learning RUTUL 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.