Only in RUTUL 45
What this means for learners
RUTUL and Salish share 19 sounds — roughly 30% of Salish'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 24 sounds found only in Salish 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 Salish. Native Salish 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.