Only in Slovak 38
What this means for learners
Slovak and Garo share 7 sounds — roughly 16% of Garo's inventory overlaps with Slovak. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 19 sounds found only in Garo represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Slovak 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, Slovak has 38 sounds not used in Garo. Native Garo speakers learning Slovak 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.